Recent reviews by Gordon Cole

LETS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GOOOOOOOO!!!!

I don't know what I could say that other reviewers already haven't.

I had not played In[side yet and I picked it up in a sale for less than $3. I played Limbo a long time ago so I always knew I wanted to check this out, and it did not disappoint. What an amazing little 3-4 hour, atmospheric, creepy experience. A perfect package of everything that Limbo was and expanding on everything. The story was interesting without ever saying a word and I was always looking forward at what was to come, The mechanics are switched up regularly that nothing ever feels stale. And the high point for me was the physics and how everything interacted with the world. Was very neat to watch as I played.

About 5 hours in and loving it so far. Eldritch horror and fishing! You get a cute little boat and drive it out into the ocean and start catching fish. The better and bigger fish you catch, the more money you get and you use that for various upgrades for fishing rods, hull sizes, motors, trawling nets, lights, etc. You can mix and match different motors, rods, and nets inside your boat to customize it the way you want to play. Bunches of fun, creepy fish (and even giant creatures) that I've seen so far with a lot more to see. All kinds of creepy things out on the water in the dark of night, so it ends up being a panicky, tense situation sometimes.

I usually don't buy games Day 1 but something about this one called out to me and it did not disappoint. Runs beautifully, no issues with it at all. Great art style. Having a ton of fun with it and I can't wait to see everything the game has to offer. I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

I'll start by saying that the last Far Cry game I played was 3 on the Xbox 360, and I loved it (I even looked and saw that I had gotten 1000/1000 achievement points for it back then). I really wanted to like this game and was excited to play a game set against the backdrop of Montana. As I played more and more of the game, it really started to sour on me.

It's a typical open world Far Cry game with missions and collectibles all over.

Pros:
-Beautiful open world
-Runs great on my hardware, I experienced only a bug or two that were visual (UI elements not going away when they should)
-Cheeseburger the bear and Peaches the cougar in my squad

Cons:
-Boring plot lines, every character interaction and story beat is bland. The story, I feel, ends up just skirting the line at what it was trying to say. It doesn't go all the way in any interesting directions.
-Boring, repetitive missions-including the interactions you have with main story bosses as you gain resistance points. Every mission boils down to assaulting a base, killing all the guys, rinse, repeat. There are 3 distinct regions which each correspond to a boss. Once you have seen 1 region, the other two are pretty much exactly the same.
-Boring weapons, bland weapon skins, not really any interesting ammo types
-Vehicles are okay to run around the world in, but nothing of note
-The collectibles, or the at least the one set I did fully collect, did not get me anything other than a small amount of money that was pretty much worthless
-Bland Perk Tree. All perks are able to be purchased as soon as you have enough perk points for it (and there are a ton to get through various ways: magazines you pick up, completing challenges and missions). Perks amounted to slight health upgrades and bland weapons upgrades (reload faster, more ammo). After you had those, all the other perks were hot garbage not even worth getting.
-Not a dealbreaker at the moment (because game servers are still up), but having to deal with Ubisoft Connect. Every time I shut down the game, the program goes nuts telling me cloud saves didnt work (although I never had a problem with my save disappearing), auto-generated emails with 2FA codes being sent at random times. It's 2023 and Ubisoft has STILL not been able to figure how to integrate the two apps cohesively. No steam achievements too, although still not a dealbreaker.

At the end of it all, I wasted my 40 hours with this game. The ending of the game sucked and I raced through the last 1/2 of the game just so I could put this game out of my mind. I saw both endings and was surprised by the more involved one. Apparently if you listen to the radio while you're in cars, you'll hear news broadcasts about things happening outside the game world, and those things eventually make your way to you in the end, setting up Far Cry New Dawn. I spent a decent amount of time in vehicles listening to the radio and only heard maybe one broadcast, that wasn't talking about much. It doesn't take long to get to place to place and with so much ♥♥♥♥ happening along the sides of the road, I feel as if you don't ever get the chance to take in that part of the story, so when you get to the end, everything feels very disjointed. After the events at the end of the game, everything you did in the game for this world ends up just being kinda meaningless. In a couple weeks, I'm almost sure I'll forget everything about this game.

If you played this game in co-op, it's probably a ton more fun, but my experience is based off just playing single player.

It's been maybe 10 years since I've played Far Cry 3 and I really don't know if I'll ever play another one based off this game. The game doesn't do anything bad, but it doesn't do anything great either. A very middle of the road game that really deserves a thumbs-sideways more than anything. There are just so many other games that are far more interesting you can spend your money on.

This game is probably one of my top 5 games of all time. What started as watching streamers play the original Binding of Isaac, to purchasing it for myself as my 1st game on Steam ever, to eagerly anticipating The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, to playing this now for over 300 hours, to wanting to purchase the Switch version. I love this game. The music has always been astounding, the challenges are tough but some of them are also something fun. I would recommend this game to anyone who has even a passing interest in rogue-lites. These types of games weren't even on my radar before BoI; and now I am always seeking out new games in this genre.

There are so many different items and characters and modes that no run will ever be the same. Some runs you may barely squeak by on skill alone, but also some runs you pick up the right combo of items and it can essentially break the game. And that is so fun. This is one of the most rewarding games I have ever played. One character you can unlock has no health whatsoever, so making it to end with that character and unlocking awesome items as a result makes me really feel like I have gotten progressively better at this game. I would recommend any Edmund McMillen game but this one absolutely takes the cake as his best in my opinion. I would urge anyone to give this a try.

My most beloved Steam game.

My most played game on steam to date. Crazy power-ups that get crazier the more items you collect. Addicting game. Very high replayability and an awesome soundtrack. 5/5