Recent reviews by Aberzhulan

Overall, I recommend this game if you can get it for a discount, or if you just REALLY LOVE Harry Potter books/movies/everything.

I really enjoyed the story of Hogwarts Legacy. Some aspect of the gameplay, however, made me rage. Specifically, towards the last 30 hours I played this game, during the achievement hunting phase, I just wanted to throw my PC out of the window.

First off, there are some well known bugs that make some collections either very difficult or entirely impossible to finish. One "fix" required me to max out graphics settings, restart, then lower graphics settings (because I don't have the best PC) for a book to appear. Another example is a book you have to grab may or may not count towards a collection.

Other things I hated:

Your choices don't matter. If you decide to be an evil, pet stealing person the ONLY consequence is you MAY feel bad IRL. If you decide to use an unforgivable curse on somebody, you might live longer.

Unskippable cutscenes. Some of them are really cool....the first 10-15 times. The next 50 times gets really old, really fast. This goes doubly for the cutscenes near the beginning of the game, if you're playing for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time.

The character customization for males is a bit flat. Every combination I tried just looked like Harry Potter. White Harry, Black Harry, Asian Harry. For females, it's a little bit better. At least none of the females looked like HP.

This is mostly a puzzle game, and the puzzles (for me) were mostly easy to figure out. I had to look up a few of the puzzles and that brings me to one point of rage: You can use the wrong spells in a challenge trial and think you're doing it with the correct spell. You can also use the correct spell, and think you're using the wrong one because flipping blocks makes no sense.

If you're in a dungeon, you CANNOT access the map. You can't port out of a dungeon. You have to, in most cases, go back to the entrance to leave. Missed a collection chest in the middle of a dungeon that has a part where you have to drop down? Guess you gotta run the whole thing again!

Jumping was a major point of anger for me. If there's the tiniest of walls in your path, you might not be able to jump over it. But if it's a 3 meter tall wall that the story requires you to climb up, your character WILL climb up it. Hope you never have to jump diagonally over a void to grab onto a ledge, because you may fall to your death or you might grab onto it!

One thing I REALLY loved was how they did gold, specifically acquiring gold. Every tier of gear gives you a set amount when sold to a vendor. Doesn't matter if it's been upgraded, identified, worn for days without cleaning, been impaled by a giant sword. The vendor WILL give you x amount for that piece. So if you HAVE to destroy something to make room for a higher tier piece of gear, destroy the greens. Also, gold is usually laying about that you can find.

Another thing I really liked is how enemies just leave their equipment all over the place. If there's a box nearby that you can move, the game most likely wants you to Strategically Transfer (that height increasing) Equipment to an Alternate Location and use it. Also, see above regarding my jumping rage.

Story is great. Sidequests are great. Everything was great until I noticed I was almost done 100%'ing the game.

Guess I already got this for free from when I got early access.

In this age of micro transactions for anything and everything, it's great to see a developer give back to people who supported them/their game when it wasn't even fully completed yet. Even though I literally was about to click "Add to Cart" when I realized it was already in my library.

I usually don't purchase purely cosmetic DLCs unless I REALLY like what's in it. BUT, from what I remember from early access, the things that I saw were amazing and I'd happily give them a little extra money for making a quality product.

Haven't played the game much, but its just making me want to play the first Watch Dogs, which has better controls and better graphics. Don't know how you go from great controls, graphics, and story line to ♥♥♥♥ controls, terrible graphics, and...the exact same story line.

I'm most likely not going to continue playing it to see if it gets better, just because of the terrible controls and UI alone. I can deal with terrible graphics. Terrible controls are a no for me.

I love mechanic simulator games, especially Car Mechanic Simulator. Rover Mechanic Simulator is basically CMS, but with Mars rovers. There's bits of interesting information on what certain parts are and do. Unfortunately, this is a rather short game and gets a tad repetitive towards the end. After you get certain upgrades, repairing rovers becomes extremely simple. Other than that, there's not much to say. The Ingenuity helicopter rover thingy is fun to work on, but it has very few parts and there's only two missions with them. Would love to see more of them, but the variations with damaged parts is lower due to there not being many parts.

In all, it's a nice way to pass the time. I think I spent about 22 hours to finish the game.

If you have a middle mouse button, highly recommended. If you don't, I'd stay away.

I've played for about 2 hours and so far I somewhat enjoyed the game. However, I'm not recommending it because the controls make this game unplayable. I have the case log set to open/close with TAB. It'll open every time I hit TAB, but if I want to close it there's a 50/50 chance when I press TAB it'll either close or stay open. I've even repeatedly hit TAB and nothing happens. I thought I was going to have to quit the game to get it to close.

My main issue is how you HAVE to use middle mouse button to "connect" to people. I don't have a middle mouse button. Period. There's no option to change that. For me, that makes the game unplayable. It's absolutely idiotic to not be able to change a simple control like that. Which is a shame, because I think I would've really enjoyed the game.

The graphics are great. The story was great. I really enjoy games that let you choose how to do missions. I usually hate playing a stealth mission, but for the last half of this game I really wanted to do it instead of going loud. Yes, I did shoot a lot of people in the face with a silenced 10mm pistol, but no alarms went off. I just finished the game and I had done all side missions. 83 hours. It was pretty fun. I'm about to do a pure stealth run, just for the achievements. Let's see if I can do it.

I didn't experience any bugs except for one. And I don't know if it was a bug or my PC just flipping out. But every once in a while (it only happened about 3 or 4 times my entire playthrough) the game would just close without warning. I save often, so it wasn't much of an issue. Plus, the autosaves were there.

The augmentations are pretty cool. I agree with that other reviewer that hacking augs are pretty much required. BUT, the game can be played without using any augs at all, and I had noticed the mission required hacks are level 1 and/or have alternate routes around it. The same with jump boost or move heavy objects augs. Having them just lets you take shortcuts.

All in all, a pretty fun and long game. I did noticed some similarities in names of people with the original Deus Ex. Turns out, this is a "re-imagining" of the original. Not bad. I haven't played the original since 2000 or 2001, so my memories are fuzzy. It's obviously not a direct remake, but there are some similarities in people and places you go.

I'm giving this a 4.5/5, only because of that weird game crash. It doesn't happen on any other games, so safe to assume it's this one.

First off, I don't really play any sort of "simulator" sort of game. I usually play RPGs or FPSs, but I watched GrayStillPlays play this and it looked pretty fun. The first 5 days I had this game, I realized with a shock I had spent over 50 hours playing it. There's something relaxing about fixing cars in a game. I enjoy fixing cars in real life as well, but only because I don't have to promise my firstborn child to a shop in order to get my car fixed professionally.

The graphics are pretty decent, even at the lowest settings on my 6 year old gaming laptop.

I bought all the DLCs and while I can't say how realistic the vehicles are, they look pretty awesome. I've mostly seen the Porsche 911 (all variants). My only issue with the DLCs is I can't seem to find anything in barns other than the standard vehicles and Porsche 911's. You'd think if half the barns you visited had half wrecked Porsches in it, there'd be another high end car somewhere but my luck must be terrible.

The (free?) tuning DLC is pretty sweet, as well. I'd love to see performance brakes or suspension stuff in there, though. They don't even have to do anything, just look cool. (Okay, so performance brakes would be cool if they improved stopping, but still.) The performance parts are more shiny than the standard parts and so I just stick them on everything I'm planning to sell.

As another reviewer mentioned part degradation is visible as heavy corrosion, which does indeed make it relatively easy to spot parts in need of replacement. However, I don't believe it makes the diagnostics tools pointless, as there have been plently of times where I had a single "Part not found" and ran all the tests and found it was something I had missed like a fuel pump or a random bushing (as found by a TEST path). In the case of the rubber bushing, it was easy to just star it so I could easily locate the offending part.

If you're into simulator games or you are interested in vehicle repair, I'd suggest getting this. While it's not a substitution for actual mechanic training, it's nice to be able to identify parts on your vehicle. I never knew what that strange U-shaped thingy in the upper part of my wheel well was. Turns out, it's an upper suspension arm. Good to know!

I got this game for free through Humble Bundle and thought I'd try it out. I expected it to be like Hacker Evolution, but it felt more realistic. I finished it over the course of about 2 days and I freakin LOVE this game. I was surprised it uses real port numbers (SSH is 22, SMTP 25, etc.) and real linux commands. I suppose that's silly to be surprising, but it's a nice little thing.

I'd recommend this to anyone and everyone. It's pretty easy in the beginning but it gets more difficult. Especially in the last part of the game. It's rare that I find a game that's not super involved, that I enjoy THIS much. If you're really into graphics, this game isn't going to excite you over its graphics. Mostly command line and that's what I'm used to. Buttons are nice to have, though.

I've just beat the game and I think I'm going to play it again, tomorrow. I'm definitely going to buy the expansion as well.

If you're looking for the old Half-Life with zero changes except updated graphics, I think you'll find Black Mesa to your liking. Even with a few new areas in some (all?) of the chapters. Ever wanted to know what was inside some of the offices in Unforseen Consequences? Now, you know! Did you feel Office Complex was entirely too short? From what I remember of the original Half-Life (keep in mind, I played it when it came out in 1999), Office Complex featured a couple offices and then a giant stairwell with a sentry gun at the top. In Black Mesa's Office Complex chapter, you get to see more offices, cafeterias, and what I think may be "secret" areas with ammo, health packs, and batteries. Nothing overpowered. One of my most favourite chapters in Half-Life was On a Rail. Crowbar Collective definitely did an amazing job in vastly expanding On a Rail. I love it!

In a couple areas, I've noted little puzzles that make you have to run around a small area and look for something that'll let you continue. Nothing table-flipping, but I know I kept running around asking myself (aloud, no less) if I missed something somewhere. Turns out, I did. I feel it adds a little something extra, instead of just running around and shooting stuff.

One thing I absolutely love, though, is that not all scientists are one of 3 people. Not all guards are the same Barney Calhoun, and not all marines are one of two models. The updated graphics are pretty awesome, too! Another great advancement is ladder damage. Pressing E will mount/dismount ladders, so no worries about running off the side one one during a long climb and coming out with 20 HP.

For the AI, marines seem to try to flank you or shoot at you from several different vantage points, all at once. It can be challenging, but nothing a .357 magnum shot to the skull won't solve! Aliens and marines both can be a little derpy at times, though. I've noticed you can peek around a corner and shoot them in the arm, repeatedly, until they die.

One of two things I do dislike about Black Mesa, which may be a limit of the Source engine or my general derpy-ness, is that it's incredibly easy to get stuck on objects, like metal carts or boxes. The other is the achievements. One achievement has you "Help a barnacle and a headcrab find true love". You can save right before a headcrab jumps into a barnacle's tongue, and after it eats the headcrab you can load your save and do it again. You can do it 10 times in a row and get the achievement in 5 minutes. To me, achievements should be awarded for something great, not something you can do in 5 minutes.

The best thing about Black Mesa, by far, is all of your favourite chapters are there...and some chapters you may hate. *cough*Blast Pit*cough* And I feel none of the extra content was done in a way that's not in the spirit of the original. There's not a single added area I've seen, so far, that looks like it was thrown in to add some fluffer to the total gameplay times. The music is amazing, but I miss the HEV charging music.

TL;DR: The added content in each chapters is amazing, the graphics and models are amazing, the puzzles are great and add to the story without being too anger-inducing. The AI could use some minor tuning, and the achievement system can feel cheaty.