Senaste recensioner av Ceres_O7

NMS plays a bit like Minecraft.

While the game is less focused around your ability to build, the base building system is in-depth and has lots of different approaches. Unlike Minecraft, recipes have to be unlocked for use first (either through exploring or through spending upgrade currency on them).

Much of the upgrading and progression is tied to exploration and travelling rather than mining, very quickly a lot of your resource gathering will become top-ups for your stockpiles. The game has multiple quest chains (2 main story questlines, 1 major postgame story and various standalone quests of differing length), and these offer core progression, and push you forward through the universe.

Effectively where Minecraft pushes you through progression by mining, NMS pushes you through progression by exploring it's worlds and learning the lore. All dialogue and story is text based, and there is an exceptionally large amount of lore here. Various locations you visit in your gameplay have unique soft-questlines tied to finding more of the same location to unlock the next text log in the chain. For example, the Abandoned Building POIs contain at least 4 interconnected storylines that require you to visit them a lot to get all of the information.

If you like deep lore that slowly unravels itself to you as you piece together the context clues scattered across all of the different lore sources and their various perspectives, this game will be an absolute delight. They spared NO expense in writing this game. While finding the lore, you will be incidentally seeing new planets, finding new creatures, and every so often finding things you haven't seen.

Since the games planets are generated with hand-made props, the variation comes from the colour, size, density and assortment of those props on different worlds. Most creatures are also built out of a number of handmade props. This means that you will see similarities between things - a No Man's Sky planet will always look like a No Man's Sky planet, no matter which planet it is. While for some this takes away from the "exploration" aspect of the game, I would argue that it leads you to notice the outliers when they do appear. Mainly, the prop system is there to give No Man's Sky it's coherent, striking art style. If you look for outlier combinations or just interesting looking situations, you will find them with JUST enough regularity to get that enjoyment from exploring.

TL;DR NMS is Minecraft except you progress by exploring and reading the lore rather than gathering different tiers of ore. The lore is incredible, the art style is amazing. If you like text heavy stories with a space-themed sandbox attached, alongside a chill but banging soundtrack, give NMS a go.

I want to start this by saying FH is a fighting game. It requires all the same skills of you as a fighting game, and then in modes like Dominion you have to utilise other skills (such as teamwork) as well.

Therefore, this game is hard to pick up. For your first few play sessions, you will get bodied hard by people online, and you will lose a lot of matches (even now I still lose many games I go into). It is easy to get tilted by this game, if you are the kind of person who gets tilted easily, I do not recommend FH, same as how I wouldn't recommend most fighting games. Some characters will seem completely broken when you are new (Centurion comes to mind), but you need to push past the mindset that 'this character is broken, that character is broken'. While this game isn't perfectly balanced (it is an ongoing effort by the devs, who are also learning by experience on how to make a fighting game), stuff that might seem OP to you at the start will quickly become manageable if you take a bit of time to practice counterplay. The game has a great training mode where you can tell AI to throw specific moves at you over and over so you can practice against combos you have trouble with.

If you can push past the steep learning curve, and get a sense for how the game works, then it is incredibly satisfying to play, and I highly recommend it. Most people play either duel or dominion (I prefer Duel, but Dominion is still very popular), and the game is definitely not dead.

The starter edition is nowhere near as much of a scam as Rainbow Six Siege's one, so I highly recommend that edition, or get the full game on a sale.

The first few paragraphs will be for AC fans looking to judge Origins compared to other AC games, then the second half will be for new players.

Origins is definitely the best AC since Black Flag, and may be the best AC of all time (although that really does come down to personal opinion on some of the game's more divisive mechanics)

Key changes from previous games:
- The game is sort of an RPG-lite now. Levelling and upgrading gear is crucial now, including upgrading the hidden blade to allow it to instantly kill targets from stealth (one of those aforementioned divisive mechanics)
- The game has a very open scope similar to Black Flag or AC3. Cities are small-ish but big enough to not get stale, and the space in between the cities is absolutely stunning, and possibly one of the most lovingly created and varied open worlds in gaming.
- Map is no longer filled with useless busywork and collectibles. Collectibles now are in the form of chests which contain weapons that you can actually use, making these chests worth seeking out.
- Combat has totally changed to be much more active now, with an emphasis on dodging and blocking.

The good parts (for AC fans):
- Origin story of the brotherhood is handled pretty well
- Modern day is non-intrusive (although this may be a negative of sorts for those who love MD) HOWEVER
- More first civ lore is revealed in Origins than in Unity and Syndicate put together, and it is entirely optional content.
- Combat is significantly more challenging than in previous entries (may be a negative to some)
- Main character Bayek is likeable, and manages to be fun to play whilst also not being yet another Ezio clone.
- No missions in the game require you to use stealth, you are completely free to go in loud however you like.

The bad parts (for AC fans):
- Modern day is very non intrusive (again, this may be a positive to some)
- Combat is completely different, it is very difficult to now take on a fort full of guards head on.
- The emphasis on social stealth that has been present since AC1 is entirely gone, with instead a focus on silent infiltration entirely. You cannot blend into crowds, you cannot use crowds as distractions etc. The game is much more of a generic sneaky-stealth game.
- Despite no missions requiring stealth, the opposite has occured where there are many missions that DO require combat. To this end, stealth gameplay is not much different to previous entries, if not somewhat simplified.

Overall for AC fans: Origins is a great game in its own right, and it does the series lore justice, but it also somewhat steps away from its gameplay roots.

Now, for complete newcomers:

Origins is a phenomenal experience, boasting one of the most well created and immersive open worlds I have ever seen, great gameplay and so many things to do.

The good parts (in general):
- The world is possibly one of the best open worlds ever created, and even if you hate all of the gameplay, Origins is worth it just to experience Egypt.
- Combat is active, not too dissimilar to (sigh) Dark Souls in its dodge-focused hitbox-based third person combat (but it has nowhere near the depth of Dark Souls in terms of stats or enemy variation or difficulty)
- So much content. Many well written sidequests and hundreds of interesting hand crafted locations to explore and raid.
- Music is incredible
- Graphics are incredible
- The game has lots of small details (like animations or dialogue) that turn it into a very high quality product. (small things like blood realistically dispersing in water, water discolouring rocks, Bayek running his hand over the top of tall grass, Bayek limping after a fall etc)
- NPCs are relatively persistent, with schedules that can and will influence your gameplay when trying to find targets or raid camps.
- Story for the most part is self contained and not dragged down too much by series lore.
- Lots of endgame content.
- Game does an alright-ish job of explaining some of the modern day lore, although it is delivered through dull modern day text files. It is a good way to refresh your mind or get up to speed on some of the modern day stuff.

The bad parts (in general):
- Story is quite poorly paced in some sections, the heavy open world quest based structure is partly to blame for this inconsistent pacing.
- Some people report incredibly high CPU usage and rumours are that this is due to the DRM that is being used.
- Game reportedly has suffered graphical downgrades in patches since launch, particularly relating to LOD, and there is currently no word on if this will be fixed.
- If you are new to AC, the game does a terrible job of explaining the Isu (aka first civ), and without going back and researching it there WILL without a doubt be parts of the game that do not make any sense without having played a prior AC.

Overall: Origins is worth it entirely for the Ancient Egypt experience it provides. The story is fine minus the pacing issues, and if you are new you will be confused by some of the sci-fi stuff, but the game is a net positive and absolutely 100% worth every cent.

Creation Club: *pulls off mask*

Modding Community: *gasp* It was you all along! Paid mods!

Creation Club: and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling modding community!

I've already played through this twice and hit almost 100% completion, and I still find myself coming back to this amazing game.

Sleeping Dogs is a fun and action packed game with a brilliant story, and a great setting, although at some points it's mechanics let it down.

Story:
In Sleeping Dogs, you will control Wei Shen, an undercover cop tasked with infiltrating one of the Hong Kong triads and bringing it down from the inside. Wei himself is mostly a pretty forgettable character, and is not really shown to have many major flaws. He is tough and intelligent, and is essentially a perfect human, to a borderline unrealistic point. The story does not so much shine in all its characters as much as it does with its excellent moral conflict as Wei begins to be torn between whether or not he wishes to destroy the gang he works himself into, and in my opinion the story is one of the best aspects of Sleeping Dogs, and is a main reason I continue to return to the game.

Setting:
While the map may be a tad small compared to many open world games, the way the streets are constructed, the sound effects, and the whole atmosphere really creates a rich setting which at least to me, never gets boring. Hong Kong is essentially a necessary part of the game due to its focus on the triads, and even though it's quite small, what they do have is done just right. While I haven't personally been to HK, a friend of mine has said that it does in fact look like the real city.

Graphics:
Sleeping Dogs is a beautiful game, especially considering how it isn't exactly too new. Some of the textures aren't too great, and often the characters seem to shine like they'd been polished, but leaving the games apartment and walking out onto a street at dusk just after some rain still never ceases to amaze me.

Music:
The original soundtrack in Sleeping Dogs, for me, isn't really anything special. It certainly isn't bad, it just isn't really unique enough to stand out. The radio songs on the other hand, really hit the mark, particularly in my opinion on stations such as Softly or Warp Radio. I never get sick of just driving around the city listening to the music.

Gameplay:
While Sleeping Dogs on the surface may look a bit similar to GTA, it is in fact quite different, something which is both a positive and a negative. On the plus side, Sleeping Dogs' hand to hand combat is very well done. While it is spammy if you want it to be, the range of options you have at your disposal means that the combat doesn't get boring no matter how many fights you are in. A downside to this combat is the presence of firearms. Guns are not introduced until about 30% through the campaign, and even once introduced you would be hard pressed to obtain one outside of a campaign mission. There is not traditional weapon select as there is in many open world games, instead you are able to carry one small firearm stored in your pocket, but that firearm does not persist between missions meaning that if you had a pistol in your pocket and then do a mission, likely that pistol will have despawned again once you re-enter the open world. The general lack of guns in Sleeping Dogs is not necessarily a bad thing however, because the guns you can use are in all honestly not always that fun. They do not really feel as satisfying as guns in, say, GTA do, particularly due to the lack of variation. While slow motion cover vaulting or quick disarms are fun, the gunplay itself is often quite lacklustre in my opinion, meaning don't come to Sleeping Dogs looking for a great shooter.

Perhaps my least favourite mechanic out of the whole game is it's driving. Cars in Sleeping Dogs handle terribly. Steering is not smooth, handbrakes are a joke, and the reversing camera is just plain bad. The redeeming feature of vehicles is the ability to jump from one to another. Despite how unrealistic doing this is, it is still satisfying to jump from one car to another in slow motion.


Overall, Sleeping Dogs is perhaps one of my favourite games of all time. It has an excellently told story taking place in a rich and atmospheric world with great visuals. The melee combat is deep and satisfying, even though guns and driving fall off a little, making Sleeping Dogs essentially a must for any fans of a good tale.

As a fan of the Assassin's Creed franchise, Chronicles: China leaves a bit to be desired, but is still a decent enough time sink.

The story:
The story in Chronicles: China is quite average at best. Shao Jun is an assassin many fans already knew about from an animated short released some years ago. When the game was announced I was excited to see Shao Jun finally getting a bit of expansion on her story. Unfortunately, the game's story is very poorly told, and is quite short. Shao Jun is on a revenge quest for reasons not explained in the game, and she undergoes extreme character development at the end of the game which doesn't really make any sense when compared to the rest of the pacing. If you were looking for the Shao Jun story that the whole community wanted, I'm afraid this isn't it.

The gameplay:
Gameplay holds up well, for the most part. Stealth is interesting and has many mechanics which will make you think about each scenario before approaching. The parkour is simple, but works extremely well, and in some of the escape missions it just feels so good to run and jump at high speeds, particularly since the game has some stunning animations for a platformer. There were only two issues I had with the gameplay. The combat in the game is quite fiddly and certainly doesn't have any of the smoothness which you see in the other aspects of the game. Although there are multiple types of attack moves and counters and options in a fight, the game just starts to break pace as soon as you enter a fight, and it really becomes an annoyance very early on, and this is not helped by the fact that you have very little health until the end of the game, and even then you can't afford to fight too many people at once. It is also not helped by some of the worst keymapping I've ever seen. Having to press c and hold a direction to counter is just such a bad idea. I strongly recommend using a controller for this game, because it holds up significantly better.

Atmosphere:
Some of the levels seem devoid of much atmosphere, particularly with the predominantly muted greys and blacks the game seems to favour so much. That said, many of the viewpoints offer stunning vistas all displayed in a beautiful calligraphic art style. The music is a mixed bag. Sometimes it just sits in the background with very little substance, and at some points really makes getting through the levels a chore. On the occasion that the music picks up, however, it does so very well and at least for me, kept me motivated to finish a level.

Overall:
Chronicles: China is okay. If you're looking for the Shao Jun story we all wanted, you won't find it here. The game mechanics mostly work very well, with the exception of combat, meaning that if you want a stealth platformer to pass the time, then by all means grab this game, it'll keep you satisfied for a few hours.

I actually find it rather difficult to recommend this game, even though it is one of my favourite games ever.

And the reason why is the same thing you will hear in all of the serious reviews of the game. It lacks any significant depth.

Let me start with the positives.

-The ships are amazing to fly. They all feel different and sound different, as well as look different and perform different.
-Combat is fun and balanced. It requires skills and patience, and is quite rewarding particularly when you manage to take down a larger ship.
-The sound design is absolutely amazing. Each ship sounds unique and all of the sound effects are absolutely superb.
-The game features an insanely in depth background simulation. In each of the hundreds of thousands of inhabited systems, numerous factions each have their own laws, affiliations and influence. A supply and demand based economy allows for dynamic variations in profitability, based on both the background simulation and player actions.
-The game has some of the best community involvement I've ever witnessed. Players influencing the economy has been a feature of many games, but in Elite the devs allow for player created lore-friendly news articles. Player created lore-friendly factions and political gameplay. Player run initiatives, and community goals which can be started and run by players. Elite has community involvement which legitimately shapes the galaxy around how the players act, and it really makes for some amazing opportunities.
-The game is beautiful and well optimised. I'm running it on a 6 year old laptop with a broken fan and I get smooth fps in almost every situation(excluding some planetary landings with Horizons)
-The game has a lot of freedom. Pretty much the only restriction that will limit what you can do will be your in game credits. Almost everything is available right from the start.

This game also has a lot of negatives, however:

-To quote a video game reviewer Yahtzee-"A game where the player can do anything is a game that focusses on nothing." Elite lacks depth. The trading mechanics are lackluster and basic. The combat, although fun, lacks much significant purpose and become very repetitive. Exploration is also something that gets quite repetitive quite quickly, and the way that the mechanics repeat themselves just ends up boring a lot of people.
-Missions are worthless and in some cases, broken. This is going to be fixed with Horizons patch 2.1 hopefully, but as it stands missions often do little to increase someone's balance.
-The game is horrifically bad at explaining almost all of the mechanics. The first tutorial essentially tells you that left click = fire weapons and then ends. I have had this game for many months now and I am still learning about how some of the most basic mechanics actually work, and that was because I have done a lot of research into how to do things in the game.

Overall, I personally love Elite Dangerous, but many people find that it is boring or much too difficult or unfinished. And I think these claims are justified. I would say that it takes a certain type of person to enjoy Elite, particularly in its current state. If you are the type of person who is able to self motivate yourself to participate in the galaxy as if you were actually living in it then I absolutely must recommend this game. If you are the type of person who wants a game for casual fun, then I don't recommend buying the full game, perhaps just buy Arena instead.

I must commend Overkill for their actions since becoming an independent developer. They have put the game and the community first, and have improved the way they handle development of payday 2 in a way that can only be described as amazing.

There was a period of time where I boycotted this game (during the great microtransaction tragedy) and had this as a negative review.

Everything has changed since then.

Every. Thing.

Microtransactions are gone, Overkill communicates with its players more, all future content will be free, the list goes on. Payday 2 has done nothing but benefit from Overkill's support in recent months and I am once again proud to be a part of the payday 2 community.

If you're one of those anti-undertale hipsters or a cynical hater

Take off your shades. Put down your skinny latte. Get off your horse. Buy this game.

Join the biggest tumblr-friendly video game circlejerk ever.

Because I swear to god

its the best damn circlejerk you'll ever experience.

If you just hate Undertale because its popular, well...

BEST STAR WARS GAME EVER MADE