Recent reviews by BlacKy #SlavaIsraelini

A very fun experience with the portal story. Puzzles are overall top notch too!

Overall the game is fine (fastest boot up time in all of gaming history), but if i had a few nitpick, it would have been something like:

* No upscale support (frame rate only reached ~5500)
* Cant set keybindings at all
* Already forgot what i wanted to type but having 3 cons sounds nicer than 2

Can highly recommend if you have nothing better to do.

Would definately recommend everyone to buy a 4090 TI to play this game tech demo. The level of path tracing is just mind bogglingly stupid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o301Gh_pzRY&t=7s

I've bought this game knowing what im getting myself into, as i was playing FH4 for roughly 500 hours, being in a discord community that is very engaging with the game and players and is in an overall high quality, it made me want to keep playing both Forzas for way more time than initially intended, so im really grateful to these discord groups and their staff and members for this reason.
With that being being said, playing on your own will make your experience way quicker to be burnt out than with a community (and i aint talking about co-op convoys, but just getting more content by other players you can befriend with and talk to online). Community-wise, the game feels kinda the same like GTA V online, where you're dropped into an unnamed massive server with random players around you, yet arent given enough tools to properly communicate with them. Add to that, the horrendous platform that is called MS store / Xbox console companion that feels so damn clunky that even befriending and chatting with other friends is a gauntlet on its own, and makes you feel like you really need to find an actual community on a 3rd party platform (discord is generally ideal for this), or else you're being left to play alone even if the game is in online mode. These hurdles can be felt regardless if playing the Steam version or MS version, as making a MS account is necessary for this game to work and be connected online.

Ok, enough chatter about friends. . . .


The game itself is great and welcoming for the car newbs and car nuts alike, and no matter where you are on the car spectrum IRL and in the gaming world, you will feel the fun of this game especially if this is your first or 2nd Forza Horizon experience (i.e - you havent played FH 1-3). FH4 was quite similar to this one but had a lot more passion put into it, while FH5 has been given lots of QoL updates over its predecessors. Things like increased amount of props and the ability to put props in route creation so now you can design your own tracks with props involved, turning this game into a gmod-like experience if you're so inclined, alongside adding 'rules' to the driving experience, turning any typical race into a minigame of its own, with different objectives than just 'finish first'.
Important side note - This game is mostly for arcade fun and not designed for sim racing in mind, meaning that any gripes you have about its physics, sound, lack of competitiveness, etc, are quite redundant as there is always a fragile balance between fun and realism. Also, this game will not fulfill your mid 2000's NFS vibes, at all. This game is its own sub-genre of sorts and is less about weeb car upgrades (tho there are plentiful overall) and nitro, and more about car veriety and making new builds.

The game is structured with a playlist system - Each month is divided into 4 seasons (4 seasons per month - one per week). The months are called 'series' which the game devs are pushing into the game, and you have a month-long content to enjoy, with a weekly 'reset' time for each season (happening every thursday afternoon). Each month has its own theme, e.g - japanese cars, offroad racing, classic cars, high performance track cars, etc. Each week (season) you get a new playlist of objectives to do (this is generally referred to as 'the weekly grind') like certain tournaments and other stuff. Playing with no pause would take you about 5-10 hours to finish an entire weekly playlist, in a typical non tryhardy playstyle.

Other content in this game

* Over 700 cars in total, and more are being added every month with new (free) updates.
* A spacious open world map of Mexico where you can drive freely with other players, (randoms or friends), either as freeroam or as a grouped convoy.
* Co-op mode with random lobbies or friends you invite ahead of time.
* Online racing, when you're playing against upto 11 other players (no bots) in typical fashion racing for xp and money (in game currency, called cr for short).
* Community-made tracks - This is where the real fun begins especially if you're a member of a group that delivers high quality custom tracks. These tracks can have any theme in them like high/low performance cars, any road type, etc.
* Auction house - You can buy and sell cars in an auction with other players.
* Forza-official radio stations with genres like EDM, pop music, hip hop, rock, and lots of latina-based music.
* Community livery and tunes - You can create and share your own car tunes and liveries and take others' from the community database.
* Countless other minigames like capture the flag, zombies, super7 (custom objective-based challenges), and even a full scale battle royale mode.


My GamerTag is Avees128, so check out my custom tracks / tunes if you feel like it!



Game versions and DLC expansions - Which to buy?

This game has 3 versions - Standard, Deluxe, and Premium. In general, you should only be thinking to buy either the standard or the premium version, as the deluxe only gives the (base game and) car pass, which is a free access to a bunch of some other cars you could eventually get in game anyway, without paying for that game version. The premium version of the game also adds some other meaningless car packs and (more importantly) 2 expansion maps.
Now, you could see the fairly negative reviews these 2 expansions (Hot Wheels and Rally Adventure) have on steam, and this is because the reviewers have compared these DLC's to the DLC's from the past FH games, which were objectively superior to these current ones in most ways. Do you care about Hot Wheels at all? If no, skip it. Are you a rally fanatic? If no, then skip this one as well.
Imo, these 2 DLC's dont give an enjoyable content (and im not even a fan of HW nor Rally), especially when being compared to the past DLC's from FH4 (personally played and loved every inch of it) and FH3 (have not played at all but i only hear positive things about it and its DLC's - which ironically, one of them was HW).


Performance - I have a Ryzen 9 5900x + AMD RX 5700xt. When testing the built-in benchmark a year ago, i was getting the following results:

1080p high - 113 FPS
1080p ultra - 79 FPS
1440p high - 99 FPS
1440p ultra - 69 FPS (nice)

Upscaling (FSR/DLSS) in this game is really bad, both for AMD and nVidia tech, so avoid these if you can. I cant comment on Ray Tracing since i cant run any RT features with my GPU, but from what i can tell, its minimal RT at best (which also means minimal performance drops). The game really loves Smart Access Memory / reBAR, so make sure you have it enabled if you can for a great fps boost of about 20% !.


In conclusion - The game itself is great and is a legit time sink (for better and for worse), but if you're not engaged in a welcoming community, it will be a relatively short amount of time (50-100ish hours till you'll feel exhausted from the endless grind of everything, so bare that in mind). If you're unsure if this game fits your flavor of racing game, i would either opt for the standard version or just try it out via gamepass and see how it feels like (just note that there are NO cross saves between the MS store platform and steam, so you will need to start over if you're switching between versions!).

Same plot like Farcry 4, but with better execution.

A very fun spinoff for bridge constructing games, themed with the portal universe.
The main game contains 60 puzzles + workshop to get endless community puzzles from.
The DLC named 'Portal proficiency' contains additional 30 puzzles where you can set your own portal locations.

My first puzzle can be found here.

Deep rock galactic is a game that sets you as one of 4 Drawf miners in a space rig.
Your job is to go into a planet and mine resources for the company you work for, as well as some other objectives they task you to do.
The game can be played as a single player but it really shines as a 4 man co op.
You can pick one of 4 classes and each has their own abilities and purposes in the game, as well as strenghts and weaknesses.
If i was to compare these classes to Team Forress 2, then you basically know most of them already: Scout, Gunner (heavy), Engineer, and Driller (a mash up of Demoman and Pyro)
As well as mining resources, you get to kill some alien bugs beneath the planet's surface.

The game starts in the space rig which acts as your home base, from there you can pick your assignment and do the missions they tell you, or just do random missions if you prefer.
You can choose to host a game and let other players join you, or hop into any existing gameplay that others host.
When you finish a mission, you level up your character's level as well as your total level and unlock some perks to implement on your character, as well as weapon upgrades.
The host can pick and choose the mission's difficulty without any pressure by the game itself to force the player to go into higher difficulties. Difficulties effect the xp and money you get from a mission, while directly correlate to how brutal the game gets in terms of enemy difficulty. There are currently 7 mission types in the game, each has a unique objective to complete.

The game is very refined overall and does get updates very often, has a solid community back from its alpha and beta stages, and new supportive and friendly players are finding
their ways into the game every day.

Overall anecdotes:

* Music is great and mildly resembles old school sci-fi movies like Blade Runner and other ones from the 80's.

* Performance is pretty good. The game runs with Unreal Engine 4 and i get about 100 fps at highest settings with AMD Rx 5700xt at 1440p + Ryzen 5 2600x. The game seems quite optimized with no frame drops.

* Gameplay and loading times are very fluid. You can launch the game and reach the playing session within 15 seconds if you run an SSD, You can start any game mode with solo mode or 2-4 players very quickly, and the game balances its difficulty relative to how many players are in the server, so if people are leaving or joining in mid game, it wont effect the gameplay too much. There arent really mission types that must have a certain class (thats a bit debatable i know, but with proper skill, any class can do anything on its own).

* The players you will meet in game are generally friendly as the game doesnt put much pressure on you to succeed, so there are always many veterans who will be glad to teach the new playerbase how the game works.

* The game runs on a peer-to-peer network, just like with the Borderlands franchise, which means that if you host a game, you get 0 lag, as there arent any dedicated servers. This is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on where you live in the world.

*If i was to nitpick one particular problem in Deep Rock Galactic is that its endgame state is quite lacking. You dont seem to get much after promoting your first character, which takes 10-30 hours of gameplay. The game itself lasts for as long as you'd like, but the sense of accomplishment comes too soon in my opinion.

To sum it up, this is easily one of the best games i've played for a while, as it serves a good change from TF2 MVM to kill time. I cant stop recommending this to others!

Red Dead Redemption 2 is not a game, but an experience.
You are experiencing the story of Arthur Morgan, a member of a group that wants to live by their own rules and try to make their own future in 1899's USA. Their story serves as a prequel to the first RDR game.

Story wise, the game progresses similar to any typical GTA game, slowly climbing the ranks of crime and doing jobs with increasingly dangerous gang members, but the difference between RDR2 and most of the GTA games is that here, the story is the focus of the game, instead of the action.

Gameplay wise, the game progresses very slowly and you will need to make sure you have a lot of free time per sitting to play this game, as one hour a day wont be enough to fully experience the game as intended. Every animation takes its time, at some points, you would feel like its somewhat of an RPG grind, but thats the charm of RDR2, as it forces you to embrace the nature of the game and take it all in, instead of rushing between different jobs. Personally it took me 100 hours to finish the story mode and i've barely scratched the surface when it comes to completing all the side stuff, and boy oh boy, there are plenty of those.

UPDATED PART - RDR ONLINE:

RDRO wants to give a very similar experience to GTA V Online but it fails to do so in a few ways.
First of all, expect to have no real help with getting around the game mode as you'll have little sense of whats going on and where to go. Its going to be really helpful to play at least 10-20 hours in single player mode before jumping into online, so you can understand how RDR mechanics even work.
2nd, expect the game world to be empty of actual players, because the game mode is dying and also because Rockstar is hiding most players from the map due to past griefing problems (can google about this).
And lastly, the last nail in the coffin is how they push pay-2-win mechanics and grinding into the game. Basically, instead of just doing jobs for money so you can upgrade your gear and buy new outfits, the game tells you to first grind gold bars by a broken awards system so you can assign yourself to a 'role', by which you will do normal jobs to earn more money and gold. Online mode tries to be as unwelcoming as possible to new players who just want to play some jobs with friends, as in most cases you will find a lacking online experience that puts you on an 'empty' server as a new character. If you search 'fastest ways to earn gold' on youtube, you will see what i mean about how the grind works. Personally i gave up with Online at level ~20 when i realised its going to be a really unwelcoming experience to just get started with the game.
As for loading times, they seem much shorter than in GTA V Online, so thats one positive i can say here, tho expect similar Rockstar server hiccups.

Performance and optimization is where the game lacks a bit (used to be much worse when it launched tho). Rockstar didnt do a fine job porting this game into the PC platform and it can be sensed mostly when riding horses, navigating on foot, and doing certain actions with certain key buttons. Nothing out of the ordinary, but know these things exist.
When it comes to performace, the game is really demanding. Personally i own an AMD RX 5700xt GPU with a Ryzen 5 2600x CPU and i get solid 75FPS on mid settings at 1440p (cranking the settings to ultra brings down the fps to around 30, again, at 1440p). Gameplay can stutter when entering towns and cities. There are 2 ways to solve this stuttering issue:
1) Lower the overall settings of the game
2) Change the API from Vulkan to Directx12 (this may cause other problems of its own tho).
Make sure you have a beastly PC as this game is not a game that you'd want to play on low detail. Also check optimization videos on youtube and guides on steam community about which setting to set to which value for optimized FPS and detail.

Both the special edition and the ultimate edition add some xp bonuses, cosmetics, practical gear and fast horses, and some money in online mode. You can google the full list.
So, which game version should you buy?
In most cases i would advise to go for the cheapest version as everything else feels like useless cosmetics and pay-to-win mechanics with no real added DLC content, however, when this game goes on sale, Rockstar deliberatedly gives higher sale value on the higher tier versions (20% for base game, 33% on special, and 40% on ultimate), thus leaving the actual price margins to be only a few dollars, so with that in mind, it will make little sense to buy the base game, so wait for a sale and then get the ultimate edition, unless you have no interest what so ever about the things that are added.

The Patriot simulator

I'll start with the bottom line: All in all, its 'yet another far cry game', similar to how FC3, FC4 and to some extent FC Primal look and behave.

* Story (with no spoilers) - You're playing as a deputy who tries to arrest a cult leader that has taken control of a county in Montana. This cult is made of religious extremists who believe the end is upon us and they must 'cull the herd' aka kill the weak to save the strong and be ready for 'the collapse' which is their modern version of the biblical flood i guess.
Things go to sh*t when trying to arrest him and you and your group end up in a gang-war type of scenario which you must survive till you find shelter. From there, the game actually begins just like any other FarCry game begins - You're saved by an npc that instructs you on how to start managing yourself in the map's sorroundings.
Been there, done that.

* Map - Roughly on the same size as FC3/4/Primal in terms of total size, but is much more condensed and has a lot more things to do in it. The game overall feels more of a GTA V's free roam when it comes to side-events that you find while traversing it. You will find lots of friendlies and enemies driving around and packed action is basically everywhere.
events like hostage rescue are very common, as well as helping out npc's on the road with their random problems.

* Followers - The game has added npc follower mechanic which works pretty well. You can add upto 2 specific followers with you and they can level up as they kill enemies to gain buffs. Most of these npc's are scattered across the world map and each has their own buffs, so finding new npc's as followers is a game of roulette that will either reward or screw you in terms of how good the followers will be. You have a total of 9 special followers that are story-bound, and countless of scattered npc's that can be used as random followers, which you can only 'store' up to 3 on your followers list. You can command followers to move to certain spots, kill specific enemies, and even revive you if you're dying. Long press to make them follow you again. Each follower has its own command key so they can do different things if you order them different actions.

* Guns - You can have upto 4 gun slots in your inventory (3 big weapons + 1 sidearm) + 1 slot for melee weapons + your own fists which you can use at anytime with your actual weapon (similar to Duke Nukem's kicks in the classic game Duke Nukem 3D). There are a few dozens of weapons in the game, ranging between melee weapons, pistols, smgs, rifles, snipers, and heavy guns like lmg's and rpg's.

* Skill tree - Works a bit differently than previous FC games. Its a mashup of badass ranks from Borderlands 2 and previous FC titles. Instead of steady xp gain, you get skill points on certain actions that you do, like completing missions and finishing world objectives and achievements. You spend the skill points on perks just like previous FC titles. All the ammo/holster upgrades are managed through this skill tree, so theres no more benefit in hunting animals for these kind of upgrades. Animal hides can be sold for money but that's it.

* AI - Enemy's AI seems to have a small improvement from earlier FC titles. They will take more time to detect you and their aim wont be as punishing as previous FC titles (tested on the hardest difficulty). Follower's AI can be wonky at times, but overall its tolerable.

* Arcade mode - An added minigame that lets you play with and against other people in 6v6 matches or in co-op mode against AI enemies like zombies/aliens/humans. There is also a feature that lets you build your own levels and play other people's levels.

* Uplay - The obvious elephant in the room - This game has some issues with Steam, even if you buy it directly from Steam, since it forces you to have Uplay installed and tells you to create a Uplay account for it anyway. From my experience, there are a few issues while playing this game that you should be aware of, though your milage may vary:

1) When opening and then closing the steam overlay in mid game, there is a slight chance (of about 20%-30%) that the mouse will stop responding. This has been confirmed to only happen in this game so its not a mouse issue. If this happens to you, tab out of the game and tab back in to fix it.
2) The more annoying issue: When pressing shift+f2 to bring up the Uplay interface (the equalevant of the Steam interface), there is a good chance the windows' mouse cursor will appear (and stay stuck) in the middle of the screen until you quit the game (will start happening after leaving uplay's interface and going back into the game). The only proper fix i've found for this is to restart the game. Sometimes, switching to 'borderless' mode instead of 'full screen' helps, but its not a guarantee.
3) You cant rebind the tab button, which means that if pressing tab in mid game, it will always pause the game and switch to the map view. Sounds nice, but since you can't rebind it, you have to put up with constant game interruptions if you want to shift+tab to the Steam overlay while already in a game menu, as doing this will unpause your game in the process. In other words, you will have to be aware to not be in an in-game menu screen when tabbing into the steam overlay.

Im fairly suspicious that these 3 issues are caused deliberatedly by Ubisoft to make Steam users avoid playing the game via the Steam interface and encourage them to migrate into Uplay entirely.

* Performance - The game runs at an avg of 80 fps in high-ultra settings at 1440p with Radeon RX 5700XT GPU and Ryzen 5 2600x CPU. No big frame drops seemed to appear and its overall well optimized in my opinion.


As for the DLC's...


Lost on Mars - A 6-7 hours campaign that puts you on Mars with Hurk. This is a really nice DLC with incredible graphics and superb futuristic weapon designs. Lots of action packed and overall highly recommended.

Hours of Darkness - A 3.5-4 hours campaign that puts you on a Vietnam rescue mission. This DLC is quite disappointing as the objectives are very generic with no real incentive to explore the map. Its also fairly easy with the weapons they give you from the beginning. No sense of progress and all in all it feels really rushed.

Living Dead Zombies - A very short 1.5 hours gameplay that is split between 7 micro stories that Guy Marvel is trying to form about (yet another) zombie apocalypse. You play the role of the hero in each of these stories and basically he forms them while you traverse it from the world he's building around you, similar to Borderlands 2's DLC with Tiny Tina (but with zero character build up). The DLC shows how Guy Marvel is trying to pitch 7 ideas to different producers for them to build a movie from.
This is the most disappointing DLC of the bunch as it offers by far the least amount of content and priced the same as the rest. Give it a hard pass.

So, which FarCry 5 version should you buy?
The basic one. Period. I've bought the Gold one as i thought the 3 DLC's will give me lots of extra hours to grind on each, but the reality was that only the Mars DLC was worth it, both in terms of length and gameplay/story. Some other things i've recieved were free cosmetics and a few extra weapons and cars that pretty much screamed 'pay to win', alongside some fancy cosmetics. Since in game money isn't a big issue in the game, i simply can't recommend buying the gold version for these extra gadgets as you can buy them later on from vendors anyway.
So to sum it up: Buy the base game and the mars DLC individually, when they're on sale. Pass on the rest.


In summary:
As said in the beginning, when you boil it all up, its basically 'more FarCry', which comes with all the good and some of the bad of the previous titles. So if you loved playing the recent FarCry games, you will sure love this, but it doesn't seem to add anything that is new to the formula.

Relive a classic timeless masterpiece in a modern visually-remastered version.
Can highly recommend this game for both those who loved playing the original in the late 90's and early 2000's, and for those who never got the chance to grow at these wonderful gaming era times, with no microtransactions and 'deluxe packages'.

*Optimization:
The game itself runs smoother than a baby's butt.
Testing with my machine (Radeon RX 5700xt + ryzen 5 2600x), the game gets an avg of 250 fps on high-very high settings at 1440p res.

*Controls:
Simply put - underwhelming.
The devs didnt seem to care about left handed players like me, so using the arrows instead of WSAD for movement is not well optimized in terms of controls, since you cant configure the right shift and ctrl buttons, only the left ones. The control configuration in general seem minimalized and not immersive like any of the Valve titles.

*The game has 'fake HL2 physics', of which it may look like the good ol' source engine physics but its a severely nerfed version of them. Objects dont have any weight, and they all feel like 'hollywood props' when you pick and throw them. Understandably, the original game wasnt designed with physics in mind so its no big deal.

*The sound is pretty much spot on. Music is as immersive as the original title as well as the sound effects from weapons and such.

Overall, Black Mesa is more than worth its price, so go and buy it or just wait for a sale.