Recent reviews by Anders

Doom 2016 was fun and a mindless violence fest. Presumably the people who made this game never quite understood this and thought that what we all loved in the last game was micro-management and prolonged cutscenes.

This time around using every weapon is not optional. It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ required as the ammunition on each gun is so low that sticking with anything that's sub-optimal will lose you fights as you run out of ammo. Granted the chainsaw is there from the start, but I have lost track of how often I have died because I got cornered behind a big hulking demon which you can't cut down with it.

Then you come to the boss battles. While these were far from the high point in Doom 2016 it seems they have once again leaned into the worse parts of their last game. The first battle is against an enemy that is invulnerable unless he launches into an attack which lasts all of 2 seconds and has a tiny tell, he is also faster than you, does crippling ranged damage, spawns a pet and minions and to top it all off there is no clear way to tell how much damage you have done. Yeah that's about as fun as it sounds. Again there were bosses that had perhaps one mechanic similar to this in Doom 2016. But the idea of having all of them in one guy. Especially when you are not taking him on one on one. Is just bad. It appeals only to the most narcissistic Dark Souls player and pretty much nobody else.

The maneuverability you had in the first game also seem greatly reduced despite the fact that you now have Shadow Warrior like strafing and dashes. Everything is off course animation locked meaning that your ability to look around while performing one maneuver to see what to do next is somewhat hampered. Again if you like to micromanage all this ♥♥♥♥ just to survive enjoy yourself. Personally I feel that this is just to much stuff to do at once.

The worst part about all this is that the videos they put up really don't show what a nightmare all this stuff is. They quite happily sell the impression that this is a sequel with a new dash mechanic and a few new/altered weapons.

Lastly I was psyched for the story they had built up in the last game and where that would go, but it's honestly so generic and presented in such a cheesy way that it's outright boring to behold. They have also fallen into the trap of making the reverence that people have for you as the Doom Slayer completely over the top as well. The new baddies are so useless they make Eggman seem like a genuinely deep and complicated character.

TL;DR The game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard because there is a ♥♥♥♥ ton of things you need to micro-manage and features a rather bland and uninteresting story. If you got your kicks off of cranking the difficulty in the old game up to the maximum and optimising your use of every weapon then this is probably a good sequel for you. If you just want to move down demons as a form of stress release buy something else.

Pretty much the only game I have ever played that's using a free2play model that works. As for how it plays the short and simple answer is a free looter shooter akin to Destiny. If I have to mention a negative it is that the tutorial section of the game hardly does anything to tell you what to do.

If you have an xBox 360 gamepad enjoy a pretty fun game. On the other hand if you own any common HOTAS or flight stick enjoy playing with mouse and keyboard. Honestly bringing a game like this to PC and expecting people to have console controllers in order to get any enjoyment out of it is just plain stupid.

First of this is a hack and slash RPG. If you have never tried that genre at all before you should be warned that a significant degree of grind is involved. While the meta of the game is completely different the cisual style and the way the story is broken up into three difficulties and various acts is hevily inspired by Diablo 2 and 3. This is also where the similarities stop.

The meta in path of Exile is centered around a passive skill tree and skill gems. The latter can be weilded and combined by inserting them into sockets in armor and weapons. Unlike Diablo there are no other objects aside from skill gems that can be inserted into sockets and the skill tree only provide passive abilities. Hence knowing which skills you want to use, how you want to combine them, and how they work in conjunction with your passive skills are important. Another thing to note here is that while the passive three is the same for all classes the starting point varies so picking a suitable class for your playstyle is important. In my first playthroughs of this game I just picked passiv skills at random. As a result I built about three duds before I built a good charachter. Hence in order to see how the combinations actually work in practise I recommend following a guide for your first charachter.

As for the items themselves they are fairly standard for the genre common, magic, rare and unique. There are no sets in the game. The uniques are a great asset to the game as they provide you with solid foundations to build around. Most guides you find will also provide you with at least some alternatives for leveling gear and some even provide multiple options.

Unlike most recent RPG's the currency system you use is commodity based rather than being tied to a spesific resource such as gold. The commodities can be combined and range from simple items like scrolls to identify items and create town portals to powerful items that can alter the number og sockets in an item, the links between sockets (used for linking gems), turn regular items into rares, increase the quality of an item etc. If you combine this with great sites like poe.trade you can easily find sub perfect uniques that are great for leveling. Since the buyout price for these uniques typically are fairly low you easyly pick up the required resources by simply picking up rares, identifying them, and selling them. If you are curious what the commodities are worth at any given time there are several resources online which keep track of this similar to how poe.trade indexes the official trade forums.

If it's your first time shopping the getting into a party with someone and meeting up can be somewhat convoluted, but if you say you are new to the game most sellers will help you out and walk you trough the process via the in-game chat. That said this is also one of those things who even though they aren't very streamlined becomes second nature after a purchase or two. That said the social interaction aspects of the game are as a whole one of it's weaknesses.

The story itself is ok. You can tell that we don't have a huge budget as it's mostly delivered through fairly stationary charachters with voice over and text boxes, in Diablo 2 style, but as long as this is not a dealbreaker then I would say it is worth a playthrough. Some charachters are off course cooler than others :)

tl:dr
The game is great if you like hack and slash RPGs and long for a more realistic look and feel and more in depth skill system than what you get in for instance Diablo 3.

I went into this "re-boot" with very low expectations. I still got disappointed.

The last Wolfenstein re-boot (Return to castle Wolfenstein) was a pretty good game. In fact the engine it ran on was so awesome that it even spawned it's own multiplayer spin off. Perhaps unsurprisingly the newest game appears to be trying hard to emulate COD or BF. The controls feel clunky and the "open world" is riddled with invisible walls. The story is served trough a, forced, mixture of cutscenes and gameplay. You know the kind where the entire thing is really a cutscene except from the part where you walk from A to B and shot a monster and then the scene continues. Initially your character falls into a coma. Sporting some hilariously disconnected scenes where we are supposed to develop feelings for our nurse because she is spoon feeding us for what seems like an eternity. While a plot like this might work in a movie it's somewhat hard to care when your just a floating camera. After all the reason why this even works in a movie is because of the dynamic between two actors. Not being able to make any form of reaction makes the whole thing very emotionless in a game. So when the Nazis; taking away the nurse, made my character stand up and start killing them it felt more comical than anything else.

In this game it would seem that a fair amount of the action takes place outside, this makes the open world aspect a huge joke. Ironically a slightly more enclosed game with multiple paths from A to B would have been better. After all having actual walls blocking you is always an improvement compared to invisible ones.

The developers have also, probably purposefully, created sneak and all-out-attack sections of the maps. The only issue is that you can't really tell which one your in. Causing several scenarios where you run out of ammo only after realizing that this area was intended for a sneak approach. This is bloody annoying when your just interested in having a good time. That said the sneaking is decently implemented and very rewarding experience when it succeeds.

Overall this is a bad game. Your money will be well spent elsewhere. Even nostalgia can't outweigh all the annoying deaths you will encounter as a result of poor design.