Recent reviews by Fantical

This is a Multiplayer review of Call of Duty Modern Warfare III, because we already know the campaign is awful. I have played every Call of Duty since Call of Duty 1 with the exception of Call of Duty: Big Red One, and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare.

I am not a Call of Duty League level player. But I'm good enough to understand all the mechanics and the differences in game-play mechanics between recent COD games and some other nuances.
First: The TTK in this game is 50 percent higher in terms of hit-points per player compared to MW2. And you can tell. You know what you can also tell? The terrible net-code and hit registration in this game that makes it seem like you take longer to kill someone then it takes for them to kill you. I like the idea of a higher TTK, but the terrible servers at launch just make every game feel just a bit more sluggish. Speaking of every game, there are literally 0 new maps. Every single map in the game is just a remake of the MW2(2009) maps with little structural changes at all. There are plenty of new weapons, but you can also use your MW2 weapon unlocks. This sounds great in theory, but in practice, the UI is a bloated mess and the MW2 weapons are almost always worse.
Speaking of the UI: What the hell?! A launcher within a launcher within a launcher? Everything just feels clunky.
Player counts another issue. Free For All with 8 players in the MW2 maps feels awful. 6v6 TDM makes most of the maps feel way too big. MW2 Ground War 9v9 style would have been perfect to bring back, since clearly much of the content of this game was stripped from the canceled MW2 Remastered Multiplayer.

All of the above being said, I still have fun. There is very little other shooters on the market that fit the niche that COD falls into. And Hardcore mode makes the game way more fun in my opinion for those of you who want something more twitch based. In regular modes, you will encounter a lot of campers who don't play the objectives because that's how the developers have setup the game. I play Call of Duty when I just want to literally jump into a match and run and gun without having to feel tactical. It's just a shame that the decent in this game is overshadowed by so much bloated garbage and poor design choices. This game should have never came out. They should have stuck to the previous plan to have a gap-year and just put more content into MW2.

I put about 25 hours into CS1. I'm a casual City Builder fan.
Pros:
The game looks great at high settings.
Realistic population scaling. As a statistics nerd, this is cool. The simulation is definitely better in this game.
Road/Grid building is a lot smoother.
Maps are bigger, and so is your ability to build/grow. There are no limits on agents/AI so you could in theory actually build a megacity with realistic population sizes.
Sewer/Water/Power systems are so much better and less of a hassle. No more are the days where you need to lay pipes everytime you expand your city. Samething with power. The export feature also allows you to make money off of your power generation which is not game-changing but still nice to have. You can also purchase power from other cities if you don't want to plop down a power plant in your first little building.

Cons:
Performance is rough sometimes. With a Lenovo Legion 7i Pro RTX4090 laptop I am getting 40-50FPS at 1600p on max settings apart from a few tweaks to Depth of Field, Shadows and Global Illumination. Not having FSR 2 or DLSS support makes it worse. But I do have an enjoyable and smooth gameplay experience and it does look like population growth doesn't affect frames as much as it did in CS1.

A fair amount of bugs when it comes to road/building placement, elevation and some simulation aspects around industry.

Schools seem to be way bigger than they should be, making expanding a pain sometimes. Demand is also a bit wonky.

The maps that came with the game, including the pre-order maps, are all very hilly, making it hard to build a larger city without a lot of landscaping, which is another problem.

Landscaping/terraforming tools are awful. This wouldn't be so bad if there was flat maps but there aren't. They are all hilly.

Bottom Line:
7 hours in, I'm hooked. Performance is already improved since launch but some other game-play quirks may take a few patches to get sorted out. I am definitively looking forward to mod support.

While I haven't played the campaign yet, so if they completely drop the ball there I may revisit this, I whole-heartily recommend Halo Infinite. I feel like it's 2007 again and I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love that. The year of polish did this game a lot of good and it's probably the most polished AAA experience I've played all year to be honest. There are a couple of areas I would improve on:
Progression System:
This a bit of a dead horse at this point, but the current progression system is not great. Exp is slow, the entire level system is based on the Season Battle Pass. I feel like they were trying to change a industry system that didn't need to be fixed. I feel like they should just make lt like Halo 3 or Halo MCC. It does however sound like 343 is taking feedback pretty quickly, and I would be content if they just sped up EXP a little bit more. Either way, not a huge deal breaker.
Quickplay:
Please allow us to select objective-based maps versus kill-based matches. I think Stronghold and CTF is great. Oddball is great too, but not when it's 3 games in a row. Either allow us to select specific modes, or make a Slayer only mode. Either way, I think more choice here is great.

Other Notes:
Gameplay: The gameplay feels like a refreshing return to Classic Halo 2/3 with modern technology and convenience and upgrades. Overall, I think the TTK is great for this type of game and I never wonder why I got killed. This game is defintely skill-based, and I already feel like a better player after 7 hours of matches, whereas in Call of Duty it always felt like luck of the draw. It is really designed so that anyone can get good if they spend enough hours on it.

Overall, this feels like over a decade of mistakes, improvements and experience from 343 is finally paying off. I am super excited to play the Campaign. If you are looking for a arena-shooter or something polished compared to the dumpster fires of recent launches in the industry, play this game.

Also, I almost forgot. THE MULTIPLAYER IS FREE. That's insane. An AAA experience for FREE is amazing. I'm a bit worried about the value of the paid portion, and I am annoyed that Co-Op and Forge isn't coming at launch, but I'll reserve my judgment for December 8th for that part.

I've put over 20 hours in the game so far. While there are a few quirks and bugs expected with a game in active development, I believe this game can finally overthrow SC4 as the best modern city-builder of the past several years.