Recent reviews by anian

I don't know who thought this was a good idea. Looter-shooter with bad shooting mechanics and random effects on weapons which do very little difference in-game.

There's basically only 4 mission types and that is it and that is on repeat. Everything is just on repeat and remix. A red enemy, a blue enemy etc. but the way you deal with them is the same chaotic pressing of random buttons. Even if you try any strategy, again you have to counter and shoot, then you get hit from some random direction and repeat. Every so often there are tougher enemies you cannot kill or that just have another healthbar when you deplete one....and many lasers from random directions...so many beams and explosions from random directions.

Most of the weapon upgrades you get are not better than what you already have. You get 2 suits for a character by default throughout the whole "campaign". At least give me a cool skin for a character every once in a while...

Traversal for some characters is ok (but it's better in Gotham Knights) and I guess some of the dialog is fine, even though it's basically an imitation of Gunn-style of dialogs and comedy. Character models look great in cutscenes (when they don't randomly disappear and a floating gun just talks and bobs around), but open-world optimization is really bad and nothing on par with even Gotham Knights. And while on subject of GK, if you thought that game world is empty...you don't know what empty means 'till you see this.

Very fun puzzles with logical solutions, offering plenty of "ah-ha" moments. One of the players should have a pen and paper on hand to write things down though. It's also all wrapped into an interesting short story with creepy/mystery vibes.

More of Mass Effect. Some repetitiveness connected with open world systems (go to a planet, talk to a person, and come back etc., staring at the loading screens each time, of course), but the story is good and companion quests especially are interesting. On normal difficulty the game seems easier than ME123 and overall there seem to be fewer choice branches, but combat is still fun. Upgrading weapons and armour is tedious and really messy though. Game is probably better with some mods (you can do it through FrostyMod), but overall it was pretty stable and bug-free for me. Didn't touch multiplayer, so no comment on that.

Fun point&click pixel art style game - if within that is something you like, you’ll like the game.

Great atmosphere, art and music. Characters are interesting and voice work is maybe not stellar but never bad. Story starts of like a murder mystery but ends up as a philosophical/abstract horror and the climax seems a bit compressed because some details and explanations are not really fleshed out that much in the end.

Gameplay time is on the short side (about 5 hours), but has many fun, varied and interesting mechanics. Puzzles have that “a-ha” factor of satifaction even though they’re not that hard.

I guess I would recommend it, especially if you already have the season pass, because it is a really good season pass addition, but 10 euros might be a bit too much on it's own. There's like 4-5 hours of gameplay here, with League's quest being especially artificially stretched out. Every quest basically wraps up one villain's story and Freeze's quest (story wise) is really surprising and is a great conclusion to Mr. Freeze's story arc for the entire game series.

Fights are rather easy (I've finished the game a month or two ago and haven't played it since and still found it easy to fight through). Even the only actual boss fight with Croc is rather easy (well I guess Nightwing helped).
The quests are more about the story anyway. What is good is that there's 4 of them and each basically has a unique gameplay feature or two (new bomb disarming mini game, new hallucinating world, a morality choice, timed car run map, AA style boss fight etc.).

Would be nice if there was a real (higher level) detective sidequest in there, but oh well.

In short - not perfect, but just right. There are some flaws, but overall the game delivers a great experience. If you like Telltale games, you'll like this one as well. It even has a much more natural integration of mechanics and story. There are simple puzzles and choice/dialog sequences, but story is king here.

Awesome atmosphere and soundtrack. Story and dialogue start of good and get better. Don't be put off if at first you find it a bit akward, because once you get into the game, it gets much more natural and appropriate. Characters grow and change as the story gets more tense, with a few really nice twists and cliffhangers.

Graphics are charming and the style of everything from the lighting to the UX details just fits together very smoothly.

Try to finish the game without spoilers and such, the emotional impact will be much greater.

Not yet finished the campaign, but so far, so good. There were only a couple of hitches but in general the patch seems to have worked on my rig (i7 and AMD R9290), only shame is all the drama that had to happen before that.

Visuals are really nice, with textures and effects looking sharp and gritty and someone did a hell of a job with lighting effects in this game. Car sections take a bit of a dive in fps, especially while it's raining.
Voice acting overall is really good, but while Conroy and Hamil give it their all, the new Scarecrow and Gordon actors (which were introduced as stars) are not really doing anything with their roles.

Storywise...a lot of changes and twists, but the story is average with some side missions being interesting while others being busywork predator challenges. It really is the end of a trilogy and various stories from before get their loose ends tied.
The combat also assumes that you've played at least Arkham City, because it ramps up from the start with turrets, enemies putting mines and sentries and with a lot of Brutes and medics in various combinations.
You also get to play a few times as a double team and there are fun takedowns to do with that.

Car sections seem to be fun for some, but I find them annoying (especially Riddler races). Battle mechanic is interesting but gets repeated until it loses it's charm and then some. By far the best usage for the car is to get rid of the flying drones which attack you while you glide in the air.

The Season pass is nowhere to be found, I got the Harley Quinn DLC but nothing else is available.

It's a good, maybe slightly short, DLC, but good for a steam sale purchase. Just more of the same though, but then again Origins is just more of the same Arkham City gameplay. If more of AC and AO is what you want, this is it.

Story is really kind of predictable, especially if you watched the TAS Batman origin episode of Mr. Freeze and even if you haven't...the strange thing is I bought this because I thought the story might be interesting, but it really isn't.

There's a new enemy with a freeze gun, which get really annoying when there's more of them, but other than that the combat is the same. XE suit does nothing new except the batarangs are now red and you melt instead of electrify with your gloves. Battle with Freeze is challenging, but it's also a bit more of the same stlye AC Freeze battle (which was interesting the first time).

I decided to give this game a go and said to myself "I'm gonna finish this one"...oh, how I was wrong. The world is interesting, but it gets lost when you fight very samey enemies all the time. Story could be interesting if characters wouldn't change their motivation every now and then, yet they keep being predictable. Also the world is very limited to a 1-3 screens per town.
Battles could be fun - the system has some neat ideas, enviroment has traps and cool strategic placements, but you very rarely get to use that, since you have to attack or you get surrounded and can't move.

But the major flaw is that the game FEELS UNFAIR all the time (even when maybe it is not really). Instead of making battles interesting, the game more than once takes your whole inventory and offers you bad equipment in exchange, then you have to battle and find out that enemies in that arena are better equipped than you.
Attack chances are random at best (a number like 90% chance don't mean anything in this game). Damage you inflict is always small unless your character has fully invested in one weapon skill (which I had to change for one character because it had the same setup as my main character and then spent many hours inflicting 3x less damage than the enemies).
The whole unfairness also applies to experience point requirements - some skills seem very out of reach (I can see the options ahead, but what I can actually afford/choose is 1-2 options and get stuck with that for hours). "Special" attacks make very little difference most of the time and are in no way interesting.

Classic arcadeish action. Somewhat similar to Mass effect series, but the RPG aspect is barely relevant. Game is fun and doesn't overstay it's welcome. Characters are slightly cliche, some things are cringeworthy and the story has really only one major interesting twist, but it's all fun and just an action filled joyride from begining to end.

STORY: In near, robot filled, future, a small team assembled from people around the world, covertly inflitrates Tokio to arrest the head of Amada corp for making "holo children"...they're androids. By producing holo children androids, Amada corp broke international law and it's reclusive owner must be held accountable. From the sewers of half sunken Tokio, to it's highest skyscrapers, you'll kill robots...lots of robots...some really big ones and some really small ones, but still lots of robots.

TIP: game has "voice command your AI pals" technology, but it's a mixed bag and not really good if there's other people in the room with you, but you can turn off this feature and command with keyboard controls easily
TIP: blow off robot heads, it's fun and makes fights easier
TIP: game is a port and takes a while to get used to the keyboard+mouse controls, but use the in-folder configuration exe to figure things out and you'll be fine