Recent reviews by Zel

Observations based on a Survival+Ranger no HUD playthrough

If you've liked Metro 2033 redux, you'll surely like this one and i'd recommend (if you play games with story in mind) to play the previous one aswell.
If you didn't like Metro 2033 redux, this one isn't different in any major way, don't buy it hoping for a different experience.

With that said, the story has a bigger scope but i personally didn't like it as much Nazis want a pure race, commies want equality for all, but both are actually ♥♥♥♥♥ wooo. The girl acts all tough and gives you ♥♥♥♥ at the start. After an incident in which you get kidnapped she does a 180 and wants to ♥♥♥♥ you, lol. Atleast the parts with the little dark one were great though.

It plays similarly to Metro 2033 redux but with a bigger emphasis on stealth than it ( you won't be forced to stealth but it'll feel like the opening levels "suggest" you to go for a stealth approach with their level design and enemy placement).

There's too many segments in which you know that when you press a thing you'll be put in an arena where you'll have to fight of waves of enemies for X amount of time until a door opens/ a car comes etc.

The railcar sequences were annoying because you'd have to get in and out of the vehicle a bunch of times just to pull a lever to be able to progress further, although i really enjoyed Regina, just because i was extremely low on ammo and escaping on my railcar while getting chased by nosalies felt very intense in a good way.

Meh boss encounters, none of them being memorable.

Above ground scenery looks even more beautiful than in Metro 2033 redux.

So yeah, all in all except for a few small things (mostly story) you'll basically be playing the same game as Metro 2033 Redux.

Atmosphere and immersion like no other, that's how i'd summarize Metro.

I've played Metro before and stopped ~2 hours in, so i can see how this game can fail at keeping your attention. Having returned to it way later, and having done a full playthrough i have to say that this game is absolutely worth your time (that's if you like stealth/survival approach to games).

This time i've played the game on Survival mode (stealth/low supplies, enemies take less hits to die ) and Ranger difficulty with no HUD and as far as i'm concerned this is the way the game is meant to be played. Now, Spartan mode (in which both you and enemies take more hits and you find way more supplies) might be for you if you don't like to sneak around, scavenge for ammo and prefer the run and gun approach instead. But in that case, i'd just buy another game. As a shooter Metro is just average, yes there's a solid variety of guns and attachments to them but Metro doesn't have any mechanics that makes its shooting stand out from the crowd (apart from the immensely satisfying headshot sound). If on top of that you don't really care for story in games, yeah... then imo, this isn't worth a buy.

From now on i'll just state why Metro is worth buying and playing on Survival+Ranger no HUD.

Compared to something like Prey (being the most recent game with great atmosphere that i've played) Preys amazing atmosphere mostly comes from the breathtaking views, level design and amazing sound work: ambient music and ambient sounds ( enemies walking around, electricity, pipes, objects hitting the space station etc etc) which give you this feeling of unease and tension while crawling around the station.

Metro does all of that and tops Preys atmosphere by having your character immerse you into the game. You wear a gas mask which gets damaged more and more as you go through combat, and you have to manually wipe off water/dirt/blood/bugs of it. There is no HUD, no HUD at all, there won't be any tutorials to introduce you to keybindings, you won't even know when a QTE is occuring and there'll be no information when you're in range for a stealth kill. (i guess they don't expect you to play without HUD on your first playthrough) Thankfully apart from that, Metro does a stunning job at showing you all the information you need on your character without the use of any UI. On most guns you can see exactly how much ammo you have left in a mag just by looking at/tilting it, you can see the type of ammo, how high is your pump charge for your air guns, charge level of your battery, the amount of medkits you have left upon using one, you have a notebook which has the current objective written in it, you have a compass to guide you to your objective, information about the remaining time of your air filter is shown on an analog clock. And it doesn't even stop at the visuals, it extends onto the audio, when your air filters are running out your character starts breathing faster and heavier letting you know that it's time for a new filter.

Some people might prefer a standard UI and might find checking for these thins tedious, but to me, all of those little things add to the immersion and atmosphere of Metro. I haven't seen a non VR game give you gameplay information in such a cool and elegant way.

Peaceful zones are used to give you some downtime after tense levels, and they are extremely detailed both visually and when it comes to dialogues between NPCs which you overhear while exploring (some of them being a few minutes long). Those give you more information about the lives of the people and current and past events of this world. This level of attention to detail is to be commended.

Horror in Metro doesn't come from jumpscares (almost never) or scary mutants, it comes from the setting, the audio (sounds of wind howling, water droplets, mutant screams/footsteps) and the survival aspect.

The most memorable moments are the ones in which the situation is extremely tense. Having barely any ammo, filters or medkits helps create those. The tension of getting chased by mutants while your screen is all bloodied, you hear your fillter running out and have just a few bullets left, is amazing.

That is achieved by proper loot distribution throughout levels and i think the devs nailed it. If you don't scavenge, on survival, you most probably won't make it to the end of the level. You have to scavenge, and when you do, you'll always get just the right amount of filters and ammo. From my experience, except for a handful of moments, i've always had some ammo and filters to defend myself but never enough not to feel constant tension. And that fear of "oh ♥♥♥♥ i've got 2 bullets left, what am i gonna do when the next mutant jumps out" and defenselessness is what adds to the "horror" element of Metro to me.

Which is why i wasn't a huge fan of levels filled with human enemies, the level of tension is too low and ammo is way too plentiful. But i guess it's fine because those levels are spread evenly throughout the game.

Story is kind of a personal one as far as i understood the dark ones were only seen around your home station and weren't really a threat to the rest of the metro(or atleast that's the way i've felt), of small scope, but ends with big consequences for all metro inhabitants which you find out in the next game with the faction war over the reactor. I can just say that i've enjoyed it.

The russian voice acting is top notch, i don't know if there's any point enabling it if you don't understand russian, but it's way better than the english version.


A few small negative things that stood out to me.

Moral points and the way you acquire them is very shallow. Metro has multiple endings and the way you unlock the "good" ending is by collecting enough of these points. Getting a point flashes your screen and plays a sound. You collect them by listening to dialogues of NPCs, by giving cash to homeless people and doing some small random things in the game. In many cases you won't even understand what you did to deserve a point, or sometimes really...there won't be any logic to it, how does me eavesdropping on someone's life story make me a moral person?

Checkpoint system sucks, instead of being set close to the next combat/story bit, plenty of times the checkpoint will respawn you in a location so far, that you'll have to recollect the same loot over and over again upon every death.

The soundtrack was meh, it felt as if it didn't fit the action happening on screen.

There was quite a bit of moments where two soundtracks would overlap and you'd just get a bunch of "noise" instead of music.

Having military bullets as currency sounded like a good idea. Sadly, i've actually never had a chance to buy a single weapon with them because of how scarce they were. All of my currency went into buying standard bullets and not a single weapon or attachment.

English voice acting was kinda bad.

I don't know why but this game has no borderless windowed mode, why? Made in 2014 your game should have support for such basic features.

For some reason, the graphics customization in the menu is minimal, if you want to make some deeper changes (changing your FoV) you'll have to modify the .ini file.

Too much lens flare, i'd just get blinded in some areas of the game.


Overall, if you're looking for some survival type gameplay in an awesome setting with deep atmosphere and immersion, get Metro, you won't regret it.

Deceit has the potential to be great but currently lacks in map variety and polish. Sadly, considering the size of the playerbase i don't think it'll get any better and will probably get abandoned in the near future, which is a shame because the idea behind it is great.

The amount of fun you're gonna have completely depends on the lobby you get put into. If you end up playing with people that don't communicate at all or a premade that talks on their own voice comms you're gonna have a bad time. If you end up playing with some randoms that just kill people for no reason you're gonna have a bad time.
So bad that you probably won't even give this game a second chance, but you should. If you're playing with friends or with randoms that use voice comms, and actually play to win, this game can be a blast.
I can't even describe how satisfying it can feel:
1. As an innocent, finding out who's infected.
2. Boy oh boy, being an infected and tricking the whole lobby into thinking you're innocent, turning everyone against some poor dude that knew you were infected all along, and in the end, slaughtering everyone...priceless.
Being a master liar has never felt better.


Honestly, it's worth a shot. This it the type of game you're probably gonna play for a few hours and never play again, but those few hours can be amazing, and it's free, so you've got nothing to lose.

I think this game gets praised way too much, so i'll write this for those that like to check negative aspects of a game before buying.


Shadow of mordor closely resembles assassin's creed when it comes to it's movement, batman when it comes to it's combat, and combines those with the nemesis system to distinguish itself from the said titles.

The movement, i think they've nailed. Your character feels responsive, climbing is quick and fluid, speed boost after jumping off/over things is amazing, pace at which you sneak, shadow stepping behind enemies, all of those are great.

The combat is batmanlike, meaning on a basic level, you're just mashing 1 key and choosing the direction of your hits. Mashy combat isn't necessarily always a bad thing and while usually easy it can be fun if the animations are of high quality, which they are. But, as far as i'm concerned, shadow of mordor doesn't reach the quality level of batman combat even though it follows mostly the same principles. I'm not sure exactly why and i'd have to go back and replay batman to get better insight, but in short i'd give a few reasons :

1. I think it's partly because in batman it feels as if your hits have force behind them, compared to shadow of mordor where basic attacks don't feel as impactful.
2. There's a bigger set of moves and gadgets.
3. Higher animation variety for basic attacks.

The most unique combat mechanic is branding, an ability to take control of an orc/orc captain and his followers and have them fight alongside you but it is introduced too late into the game, when most of us already have a set approach to doing things.

The nemesis system is basically a system for procedurally generating mini bosses, and surprisingly on the surface it works pretty well, you'd think procedurally generated orc captains (mini bosses) would be very generic, but because of their unique models/voices/combat traits they mostly feel handcrafted.

This feature is supposedly considered the main selling point of the game, is it a good feature? It is. Is it enough to carry the game? It wouldn't be even if it was implemented perfectly and it isn't, so no.

The main reason why the nemesis system fails is the fact that the game is way too easy.
You spend a huge chunk of playtime mowing through hordes of braindead orcs and these orc captains are supposed to bring a change of pace, to stand out, change your gameplay and they can, the problem is, unless you specifically let them kill you over and over again or pass the time, that won't happen. They will be too low level, too weak and will get butchered, forgotten and replaced just like all the normal orcs. Your last miniboss before you finish the game is an orc captain that is supposed to be your nemesis, you're supposed to know who he is from all the times you fought him. But guess what? Because none of the orc captains posed a threat and died in 1-2 attempts i had no idea who this dude was. To me he was another generic orc captain.
So yeah, for you to have some proper fun it is expected from you to die on purpose, which to me is bad game design.

This is the primary thing from which the nemesis system suffers, but the game being easy damages other parts of it aswell.

Apart from the nemesis system, the game being too easy also ruins combat and the interesting branding mechanic.
If you have a big variety of abilties you can use but there's no motivation to use any of them, you'll just end up using whatever you're used to and whatever works best, and for me that was the bow. Bow headshots just insta-kill all non captain orcs and because of that i ignored a decent chunk of combat abilities.
The same applies to branding, there really isn't a single point in the game where you feel that branding is necessary, so even though it's an interesting mechanic you end up not bothering with it.

The boss encounters are terrible, there is no difference between boss encounters and orc captains, bosses totally feel as if you're fighting a regular orc captain. The cherry on top is that the last boss himself is also a QTE sequence....Having the last boss be a QTE sequence feels like an insult to the player, honestly...

The game isn't helped by the fact that the side activities are extremely boring. You acquire collectibles, collect herbs, free prisoners, but it's all very basic and shallow and exists solely to increase your play time.

On the topic of collectibles i've just mentioned, the game has you spin these random objects (when you first obtain them) until you find a "memory point" and then boom, you get to hear a few lore related lines of dialogue. Things that go further into the gameworld lore can be nice, but only if you have made the player invested in the story/lore in the first place. Collectibles should just be extras that enrich the story after it has been presented well enough during gameplay and cutscenes.

Sadly, the main story here is so forgettable that these lore bits from collectibles don't mean ♥♥♥♥. I always attempt to get invested in a games story and if it's interesting i end up remembering quite a bit about it. This one didn't catch my attention at all, all that i remember is you share your
body with some elf and you're trying to get revenge, so you do stuff for the said elf , that's the extent of my knowledge, that's how much i cared.

Characters are forgettable, with the exception of ratbag.

When it comes to visuals, it does have some high quality graphics but that doesn't save the overall aesthetic of the game. To me this is a game with one of the ugliest environments i've seen in a while. The zones look terrible, the first one is predominantly brown, consisting of rocks/mud/ruins/forts scattered around and the second one is basically the same just recolored to green. The part of visuals that somewhat save thhis games aesthetic have got to be the orcs. The orcs look amazing. Best looking orcs in anygame to date, hands down.


In total i clocked in at only 13 hours to beat the game and that includes doing a solid amount of side activities, which for an open world game is kinda low (compared to let's say batman which had side activities that were more interesting and provided higher playtime), although considering how repetitive the game is it's probably for the best.

The thing about shadow of mordor is, it ticks all the required boxes to be great from a technical standpoint (visual fidelity, sound, animations etc.) but from artistic (aside from the amazing looking orcs) and gameplay standpoints (which is the most important thing), it's mediocre at best and feels more like a proof of concept, a demo. I'm sure there's fun to be had judging by the steam reviews, but imo there's too much work expected to be done by the player to create fun in shadow of mordor.

Nevertheless, if you've liked games like assassins creed and batman, or if you can create your own fun/adventure (hunting a specific captain, creating an orc clan war) i'd still tell you to give this a shot, if not, then surely stay away, this game is as far as i'm concerned a mindless repetitive orc killing simulator and probably a demo for shadow of war.

Update, got banned for asking people with an accent if they are pakistani (ofcourse meant no offense), which they were and didn't take any offense to. Great system UBI 10/10, ban for words without any context. Don't talk to anyone through ingame chat or mongbisoft will ban you for saying random words.
______

If you like fast paced gameplay & run and gun approach to FPS games, aren't a fan of having to calculate every next step: checking windows/doors/scanning with drones before entering, waiting at a corner peeking for a long time, you're going to have a bad time and probably shouldn't buy this.

The movement is slow and you spend plenty of time crouching and walking.

The game has a pretty steep learning curve, getting to know all the operators, the map layouts, the gun recoil patterns etc etc requires quite a bit of time. Sure if you've got good aim usually you'll get some kills, but without the map/operator knowledge you'll be getting killed from nowhere by god knows what and struggle to find a way to the objective (especially if you haven't found it during the drone phase). The best showcase of new players struggling with this game, is playing casual mode, which is crowded by them and where you can clearly see how they have no idea what to do, where to go, and just rush straight to their deaths, which gives players with ♥♥♥♥ aim like me a chance to dominate just because of the map/operator knowledge. So once again, if you're not up for a steep learning curve, better skip this game.

With that said, if you like the slow approach and take your time with this game, i think you're gonna have a blast. It has depth like no other shooter, hugely influenced and helped by surfaces being destructible (creating new tactical opportunities) and the variety of operators, maps + objective spawn locations on said maps.
Now, when it comes to playing this game "competitively", i'm not good enough to tell you how balanced it is or if netcode is any good.

What i can say is

Ranked system in this game is a complete joke, they say it's in beta, but i haven't seen any improvements in the last 9 months.

1.Being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ myself, i'm amazed how every season i get placed way higher than where i finished at previous season, while playing absolutely terribly and having bad W/L ratio in the placement games. After you've done your placements, you start out by winning/losing 100+ points per game, and, logically the more you play, the more accurately the MMR system can pinpoint your skill level, so it starts giving you less and less points, the problem is, this goes to the extreme. Matches in this game can get pretty long, and when after playing quite a bit during a season you end up getting <20 points per game, you lose the will to play, because you've got no chance of moving up or down the ladder.

Overwatch has the same system, but there i've never felt that i can't rank up to the extent to which me or my friends do in siege (later into the season). Overwatch usually places you below your previous seasons MMR after placement games, and while i hate that a lot, i think it's still better than people being placed way higher than their skill level and ending up having 0 kills and losing 5 games in a row.

2.If a player leaves at the start of the match, before the round even began, the game continues. In other games, if that happens, you'd go straight back to the queue, which makes sense. If a match hasn't begun, it's not like the 5 player team would feel punished for someone in the opposite team leaving, because they haven't even shown their abilities in the match yet, so except some time, they don't lose out on anything.
Currently, the game gets ruined for the 4 player team.

3.Leavers don't get punished hard enough, i've had people ragequit the match, get a 15 min ban from ranked, and that's it, they don't even lose extra MMR. If people are gonna ruin other peoples gaming experiences they should either be punished way more harshly or be placed in lower priority queue with others like themselves.

4.Teamkilling, now, this might just be me and i might be wrong. But a static 2 teamkills rule that automatically kicks a player isn't the optimal way of dealing with TKs. I'd see people throw a grenade killing a hostage and a player or 2 players at the same time and get insta kicked. Sometimes people would run into each others line of fire accidentally and get kicked. Other times someone would get angry at you, drop you to 10 hp and get no penalty. An improvement to this system would imo be, the option to choose to use the teamkill against the player or not, if the killed person watches the replay, it should be up to them to decide if the kill should count against TKer. And while that system would be far from perfect i believe it would be better than what we have currently and would be the first step in the right direction.

An honorable mention
The customization menu.
It is horrendous, you have to open each and every operator weapon manually, even if you want to set the same skin and attachments on all of them. It is so ♥♥♥♥..The customization menus take a few seconds to load per operator, and you can't work on customizing your gear midgame while dead. Something like setting up all of your operators can take a frustratingly long amount of time, especially when the only thing you want to do, is use a specific weapon skin on all weapons.
Now, i don't have any solutions to the problem myself, but in it's current state, customization system is horrible.

I feel like UBISOFT wants to make this their esports title but imo they have no idea how to do it properly.
Most of the problems that this game has, don't come from gameplay but from the moronic decisions that UBISOFT makes.

The elephant in the room of these decisions is... this games monetisation.
This game is cancer incarnate when it comes to it's monetisation.
The game gives everyone free access to all of the current maps, but when it comes to operators you've got 5 options

Starter
Standard
Advanced
Gold
Complete

In a game such as siege, where your success depends on the comp of operators that you use, giving someone only 4 operators in the starter edition, out of the available 36+ is a joke.
Grinding operators can take anywhere from 10-30 hours depending on if you're buying the ones that came out when the game shipped or the season pass operators.
And when you take into account that you also have to pay for attachments for every operator, even when they use the same scopes/grips (or had to up until march patch, not really sure).
So really, unless you've got a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of hours to spare, don't bother with the starter edition. Some people will tell you that you'll learn your operators better when you've got a limited pool to choose from, that's true, but the amount of hours you need to sink in to buy a new one is just ridiculous and no matter how good you are with the ones you have, you'll need a bigger pool to be able to be useful in every situation.
The minimum you should be going for is standard edition, with a pool of 20 operators (you've got to unlock them aswell, but the process is very quick), you can actually always be useful.
But ofcourse, if you want the full experience you have to cashout 120 euros for the complete edition. I don't even want to think about how this game will play when there's a 100 operator pool and a new player has 20, unless he pays an absurd amount of money.

And you'd think that that would be it, but no, this game also sells skins, exp boosters and lootboxes...no limit to the greed.

So yeah, do i recommend it for it's gameplay, yes, absolutely, if you don't mind the slow gameplay and like the tactical approach, buy it, you'll enjoy it.
But really, the business practices of UBISOFT in this game can barely be compared with any other game, except other UBISOFT games. lol

Not too much to say, just as everyone in the review section has been stating this game is a masterpiece.
The visuals: graphics, the setting, scenery.
The audio: music, sound effects, voice acting ( dwarves <3) the exception being a bunch of voices in Touissaint, mostly knights, it feels as if they've just hired a bunch of random swedes to voice them.
The story presentation, dialogue.
Gwent!
etc etc etc, all amazing


With that said, here's a few specific things that stood out to me.

The hand crafted camera angles during quests/dialogue add this "cinematic" feeling, they show you some great scenery and backdrops and are just amazing, especially when you compare them to something like fallout where the camera during dialogue is completely static.

Just as many other open world games this game has a lot of side activities. But compared to those other games in which the side activities consist of you collecting a bunch of random ♥♥♥♥♥ unusable collectibles with no attached backstory or clearing 100 similarly looking camps of the same 5 generic dudes. (All of which just exist so that companies could say "this game has 200 hours of content!", looking at you Ubisoft :) )
Compared to those, most side activities in the Witcher have some storytelling attached to them (especially in the expansions) either through notes on the loot or prop placement around the location. These stories revolve around people in this universe, their lives, a trouble they might've gotten themselves in, a message that they wanted to relay to someone... These narrative bits usually don't have any connection to the main story of the game or Geralt himself but they add a lot towards the feeling that this is a living breathing world and while that might not be interesting to some players, having some context added to murdering a bunch of seemingly random mobs is always better than just having target dummies. Same as how collecting hidden recipes/swords/armor is more interesting than collecting some useless unusable trash that exists just to artifically increase play time.

Plenty of RPGs attempt to give you an illusion of choice but they do it in a lazy way with barely any effort placed into hiding that fact. Usually by showing completely the same dialogue/cutscenes no matter what decisions you've made previously.
Well, even though this game also uses the illusion of choice technique, it's not felt as strongly as in other titles because effort has been put intohiding it. And i think it really contributes to the feeling that your actions actually matter.

No hand holding when it comes to morality.


Cool little details/features

The way Geralt slides downhill is awesome and more games should take this approach.
The dialog skip is not bound to the same button as choosing the next line of dialogue, which prevents you from getting into situations where you accidently select the next line of dialogue when really, you just wanted to skip dialogue.
Dialogue choices which will end the dialogue (or get you to the next stage of dialogue).
The automatic movement of horses along paths where you don't have to steer them constantly along those paths (not perfectly executed but solid implementation and a great idea overall).
I don't think i've seen better implementation of trees and their bending in a game than in the Witcher, especially when you combine it with the amazing sound design.It truly feels special.

DUALSHOCK BUTTON LAYOUT

Small negatives

Too many fighting and racing minigames. They were nice at first but have overstayed their welcome.
Fall damage, Geralt isn't capable of falling from anything higher than 2 meters without dying, what?
The UI is cluttered, finding the exact potion or an item you want unless you remember them by their image is aids and the same applies to your "buff bar".
There were more but i cannot think of any of them of the top of my head right now.

Thankfully most small issues can be fixed with mods and this game has great mod support.

The big "bad" thing

The combat.
Just as the first 2 games had mediocre combat at best to terrible at worst, i'd have to say this game follows those steps. The main major improvement is definitely the ability to use potions during combat.(which doesn't fit the lore, but in a game, gameplay comes first, right?) It does improves on the previous titles by a bit but it's mostly just from the production quality standpoint.
The combat stays very spammy with an extremely small variety of moves, fast and slow attacks and rend and whirlwind as your "finishers". And that is really sad considering the amount of ways in which you can modify your character (4 different "talent trees", runeforging, mutations, set bonuses, stats). None of that matters if the base of your combat system is meh. Crossbows are pointless and don't really have a use except for underwater combat and getting flying beasts grounded. Signs are nice and all but they are quite weak (from my experience) and once again, you don't have a lot of options, you've got 2 choices for cc 1 "pure" defensive and 2 offensive ones. So, is combat ♥♥♥♥? No. Is it average? Eh...i don't know...maybe it's average or somewhat good? (when you include all the ways in which you can improve/modify your character with talents/sets etc)
But when all the other aspects of your game are amazing, the Witchers combat being average is a letdown. Not to the extent that you can't enjoy it or that there is no variety in it at all, but still a letdown. Especially if you do not forget that at the end of the day, combat is the "heart" of the game.


So yeah, if there's anything at all to complain about in this game it's definitely the combat.

Nevertheless, as stated by so many people this game is a masterpiece. It's a must own if you're into RPGs and we really should commend and support devs such as CD Projekt Red for the work they've put it into this project. The free DLC, the expansions oozing with content... A company being this good to it's customers is really an exception rather than the rule these days.

This game is like an abusive relationship.

Starts out well and you're having some good times, yet after some time something changes (this game showing you it's awful technical side) and you start enjoying it less and less.
You want to love it, you really do and you get these moments where you think you do but actually, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate it and never want to have anything to do with it ever again. And yet, after some time you end up booting it up again, expecting some great times with your mates, yet most of the time you just get angry, dissapointed and very very salty.


A big chunk of games, you die as soon as you drop because someone else got a gun before you or leave because your mates died and you don't want them to afk for 30 min.
Another big chunk of games you loot/loot+kill everyone at the drop point and then play running simulator until one of the later circles.
And the whole time you're just waiting for that one game where everything aligns perfectly, you loot well, kill loads, do some sicks moves and win.
And that's fine , and is how this game genre works (the rng in looting, the midgame downtime) but the last thing you need (when you're already super easily frustrated) are technical issues, and oh boy, boy oh boy.. this game is riddled with these.

The optimization and framerate, while way better than prerelease, seems to be getting worse with almost every update they put out. (don't forget that all of these updates are anywhere from 1.5 to 9 gigs big lol, and are usually just backend changes).
The loot lag at the start of the match, at the point where the performance of the game is absolutely critical and every second matters, is ridiculous and cuts short plenty of games.
Same thing when it comes to weapons not loading in until you've went past them and you end up getting blasted by someone who came from the location you were just at a few seconds ago.
The parachute feels and acts as if it's made out of bricks and sometimes while landing flings you across the map like a slingshot, let's not even talk about the constant random fall damage that would get you anywhere from 95% to 10% hp before you even got to loot a single item. (thankfully they've seemed to fix that in one of the recent updates, let's hope it stay's that way).
The worst of them all has to be the abysmal hit detection in the early game, you seeing blood splatter all across the screen, checking the death cam, and seeing the game not register the shots at all. (once again especially in the early game when it's absolutely critical that the game performs well)
The cheating issues which loads of players have been talking about endlessly.
The high latency players, usually chinese :) because of whom ♥♥♥♥ like this happens). https://giant.gfycat.com/GenuineGleamingBufeo.webm (i don't know how effective this change actually was, but atleast in one of the updates they've started grouping people into games by their latency).

And these are just the biggest and most obvious issues, over the 500 hours i've played i've seen way more problems which most of i can't even remember, but here are some off the top of my head.

Falling through the map randomly (usually after doing a jump with a vehicle) not being able to rotate camera, the weapon scope having no indicators, vehicles exploding just by touching certain objects, slight contact of a vehicle and player resulting in the player being flung 5 meters and getting knocked, teammates having no markers above them, getting stuck in walls upon leaving vehicles, climbing on top of a box in the water and dying...if i had the will to think about it some more i could come up with a dozen more issues which ruined a match or a few in one way or another.

I mean, this would've been somewhat fine if the game was still in early access, but this game claims that it's fully released (and you'd expect that it would mean the game has a certain amount of polish to it), but i guess they just had to sell some extra copies on christmas.
And i'm sure the developers are working hard at fixing these issues, but we should be judging the game by what it is, not what they're trying to make it be or the effort they put in it.
As a cherry on top the game also had "paid" lootboxes since early access which...really...is unacceptable imo, trying to get more money out of their customers while the game still isn't even finished for 1.0.


And yet, even after all these criticisms.... i believe new players wouldn't feel as if these issues make the game unplayable.(atleast for the first few hours or dozens of hours because they only stand out after they ruin your games a lot of times)

So i'm a bit torn on this one honestly clearly i've played it a lot so there is some appeal to it. I can't say that the game doesn't have great moments, especially (atleast in my case) when you play with friends and you fill the prematch and midgame downtime with some banter, spend games driving over people, chasing the box, being a crossbow assassin and getting some chicken dinners every now and then.
But really.. i don't think we should be supporting companies like this. Companies that put cosmetic lootboxes prerelease, banning "confirmed" stream snipers, releasing an unfinished product. ( or atleast stop supporting them, considering how much money they've made already :) )

Oh well, while this game has executed this genre better than any game before it, there's still a long way to go until we get a BR game done right. You can see that slowly but steadily this game is on decline, both when it comes to streaming it and playing it, players are sick of it and have moved to fortnite, which clearly means that bluehole is doing something wrong. So if you ask me, just wait for someone else to perfectly execute this genre, or wait for bluehole to sort it's ♥♥♥♥ out and make this game great.

A solid game but, i'd have to say while it's good, it's inferior to hexcells, so if you haven't played that you should start with it instead and then get this if you want some more puzzles of the same style and from the same dev.

All the levels happen on a square grid and while that on it's own isn't bad, after you've played hexcells the level variety feels dull.
I've played the game in windowed mode and at some points i felt like it would've been nice if the grid was either bigger or you had the option to zoom.
Also, this might've only been me but i felt like the explanations of game mechanics were kinda bad, in other games i'd instantly understand what the rulesets were while in this one it was kinda vague, specifically the number in the square explanation.

So yeah, all in all, not a bad puzzle game, but not as impressive as hexcells.

One of the most atmospheric games i have ever played. The ambient music, overall sound design and the attention to detail in the environments (from the level design and art style to stories being told through placement of bodies and items,e-mails and audio logs) really sold me the feeling that i'm on a space station in the middle of a disaster. Combined with a really intruguing story and great character progression Prey makes for a really compelling game.

A thing i'd like to commend the developers for is the fact that plenty of side quests in this game do not reward you with loot, but only with story bits, and i believe they've done a pretty good job and have shown that you can reward players in meaningful ways besides loot.

The early game was amazing, the introduction to the story and the station, the GLOO gun, combat "requiring" from you to skip enemies/use your environment to assist you with killing them, scarceness of ammo.

Mid game was also really good, further character progression allowing you to reach places you've never been to, and giving you other ways of reaching locations you've already visited. Unlocking new combat abilities and powering them up, uncovering secrets of the employees of the station through side quests and environments that show you a "behind the scenes" look of the Transtar organisation and all the nasty ♥♥♥♥ they did. All of this is loads of fun.

Now we get to the late game and while the story stays strong imo, the game just becomes a chore, having to backtrack a million times for both the main quest and the side quests through places which you've already been to 10 times, enemies constantly respawning wasting your ammo and supplies.
In the last ~15% of the game i just stopped dealing with enemies altogether and kept sprinting past them to get to the next loading screen.

So yeah

The good:

Music, level design and the world, story, the freedom to choose your approach, the ability to basically kill any NPC you want, replayability, endings which take actions from your playthrough into account. I'm sure the positives have been discussed to death in other reviews. The main thing that stood out for me from the positives is the sound design and how depending on your location and the enemies near you, the ambient music and sounds would shift and completely change the way you feel about the situation. Oh yeah, and the space walks.

The bad:

Combat (by that i mean the "human" weapon combat, since i haven't picked up any typhon abilities so i don't know if that feels any better ) is pretty basic (you don't even have the option to use sights, weapons only have one firing mode) and enemies are pretty much just bullet sponges. At the start you're "struggling" for survival and it's great fun but the further you progress into the game the more of a chore it becomes and at the end of the game you just wanna skip it completely.

The amount of loading screens, backtracking and respawning enemies in the endgame is absolutely ridiculous it gets so dull i just wanna teleport to the next objective without interacting with anything at all.

In my experience, turrets were pointless, every time i'd come back to a place after the enemies have respawned, they would've been destroyed for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason so i just stopped repairing them.

The hacking mini game gets dull very quickly.


The "horror" element of the game wears of quite quickly because enemies really aren't a threat to you past early game even on high difficulty settings, which is a shame even though i guess isn't really easy to solve considering that this is an "open ended" game and the game can't limit the speed at which you become stronger, but the game would've been more interesting if encounters were harder and more scarce rather than plentiful and easy.

Overall i'd stil say, pros outweigh the cons and if you're into games like Deus Ex and Dishonored for their freedom of approaching a problem and a good story and character progression and Half Life for the presentation, i think you're going to enjoy this game.

+Great gunplay
+While the variety of weapons is not that great, the weapon modes and the dual-wielding make up for it.
+Decent stealth gameplay (which i would not expect from this type of game). And it isn't forced, so if you want to go guns blazing you can almost always do so.
+Absolutely AMAZING soundtrack
+The story, which i think is what makes this game memorable for years to come. I've rarely felt this invested into an FPS storyline, the characters feel very human and you can easily connect with them on an emotional level.
+The game does not shy away from showing "meaningful" gore scenes which i believe is a good thing, it makes you "feel" the horrors of war.
+Progression/perk system that doesn't feel forced
+Non (fully) regenerating health system and all the mechanics that remind you of old FPS-es (like collectable healthpacks and armor)
+There's some replayability, achieved with the alternate game modes and an early game choice of a side character which could potentially warrant a second playthrough (although most probably not).

- 30fps cutscenes
- Environmental textures
- Fetch quests, the sewers level and stuff like that
- The final battle (last boss) doesn't feel as epic as some previous bosses and mini-bosses, like the London monitor
- The main antagonist is absent from the screen for too long to be properly developed, the game does try but since you basically don't see the guy from the first mission until the very end you end up not caring that much, which is a shame because what you see of the antagonist is really cool but it would've been nice if he had more "onscreen" time
- The ending


I went in expecting mindless carnage and bloodbath but what i got is all of that + a great story combined with excellent visuals, atmosphere, soundtrack and sound design.