Recent reviews by [SVS] JoshL117

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I honestly don't understand why people bash this game.
The story and DLC missions are amazingly written and beautifully acted. It's very rare a game can bring me to tears, but one mission here nearly did. The story is amazing, the characters are awesome, the world is detailed and believable, what's there to hate? Oh yeah, the mechanics and graphics (at times).

Mechanically speaking, there are some aspects that bring it down. For example, no speed limiter; you can't take a nice leisurely drive to take in the sights or listen to dialogue or the radio talk show. Then again, you could go over 100 and the cops wont care. A lot of "missions" are grindy and have you "go here, interrogate someone, spare/kill them, go here, kill person, come back, next mission, go here, interrogate someone, spare/kill them, go here, kill person, come back." Rinse and repeat. Can you have fun in the game? Of course you can. Are there interesting things/mechanics? Yes there are.

Biggest negative is the graphics. Yes, at times it looks beautiful, but other times not so much. What's more, the graphics will spaz out and cause blurry flickering in the sky or giant lines will flicker through everything. No idea what the cause is. What's more the game has a serious memory leak issue and will cause your CPU to run hot even when paused.
There are TONS of bugs that are still unpatched to this day. New missions not appearing, crucial NPCs don't do what they're supposed to resulting in a soft lock where you can't move, the flickering, memory leak, etc.
Softlock
Bright interior
There is an infinite money glitch that allows you to get $10,000 every 15 seconds or so. Look it up for more info, but find the location after starting the racket, do N O T follow the car to the location because once you get the money after following them it will not come back. Find the location first and go alone, get the money, drive away a short distance, drive back, grab the money, rinse and repeat.

The elephant in the room is the racial aspect of the game. Many claim it's "woke" but I honestly don't see that. Living in Louisiana all my life as a white man, I don't see any "woke" aspects, the racial aspect seems pretty average for the area for the time, and even nowadays from the older generations here. Speaking of, the Cajun accents are all pretty good, some don't pronounce "cher" right, though.
One really interesting moment was when a lesser known racial related moment in history was mentioned briefly in the game. The Voice of the Hollow mentions a black woman "singing about Mississippi." Well this actually happened.

The soundtrack is what you'd expect from a Mafia game; lots of period music (which gets your videos copyrighted) including Elvis, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, and Jimi f'n Hendrix blasting All Along the Watchtower at the title screen. But there's also so many great music pieces created by the dev team, especially during action segments.


In all, the game is not perfect by any means, still buggy as hell, still passed up by many Mafia veterans, still given a bad reputation. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game, that doesn't mean it's not fit in the Mafia universe, that doesn't mean the game is terrible in every regard.
The writing is excellent, the actors are excellent, the story is excellent.
Mafia 3's "failure" has already given Hangar 18 a learning experience for future games. Mafia Definitive Edition came after Mafia 3 and is way more polished, so they're on the right track.

Pick it up at whatever price point you want, but don't skip this game.
I received this game free (and Mafia 2 DE/Classic) for pre ordering Mafia DE.

Proof that Sonic fans (commissioned by Sega proper) can make a better Sonic game than Sonic Team.

A murder mystery visual novel akin to Ace Attorney but with a Sonic the Hedgehog twist.
It is done incredibly well and is absolutely charming from start to finish. Great music, dialogue, comic styled art, comedy, twists, etc.
Not as intricate as Ace Attorney, and a "Think" mechanic similar to Edgeworth Investigation's mechanic, it's more like a baseline Ace Attorney style, with its own flair.
While mainly point and click, some segments require WASD/arrows and space, which are (visually) callbacks to the older runner style Sonic games and ring collecting. The later stages can be quite hectic on high refresh rate monitors, though.

Can't say anything on bugs as none have presented themselves in this case, pretty solid build.
No autosave, only manual saving.
(nitpick) Some dialogue from the player doesn't seem to match previous segment attitudes. First high energy and willingness, then suddenly almost put off-ish and uncaring in the next.
(nitpick) Dialogue when fading into "flashback" scenes will stay and then flash before the next dialogue appears.

If you're a fan of Sonic and Ace Attorney style gameplay, pick this up. And it's free! There's no reason not to!

THIS IS NOT 10/10, not GOTY, not even close.
Steam needs to implement a third review option. Mixed. Instead of just Recommended or Not.
Consider this review Mixed.

Hogwarts Legacy is the first modern Harry Potter universe game since the original movie/book based games on the classic consoles.
This is listed as an RPG, but is lacking many basic features that are present in many, more popular RPGs.
Many outlets rate this game 10/10 but it is nowhere near that, especially not the pc port.

THE GOOD
The graphics are great, especially the sky. Snow in winter is beautiful. The sunrise at the coast, gorgeous.
Great, captivating moments in cutscenes.
Niamh's Trial was friggin awesome.
Huge world to explore, including the Castle itself.
Custom wand.

THE BAD
Characters will jitter and change positions or clip in different locations.
Enemies will fall through the ground, soft locking a fight sequence.
Companion NPCs can get caught in a pathing loop and run in place forever, preventing you from continuing.

To go into detail...

1. CHOICES DO NOT MATTER, AT ALL
If you want to RP your character as the most evil person who is the rightful Heir of Slytherin, well too bad because all the dialogue options have no real effect on the outcome at all and your character is always overly nice and always has a goofy smile.
The only choice that matters is the choice at the end, even still you're still treated as the hero regardless.

2. Welcome to Hogwarts Legacy. The game where everything is made up and the (House) Points don't matter.
In the classic games, House Points actually mattered and depending on how you did in classes (yes, you could actually attend classes regularly) your House would get more/less points. In Hogwarts Legacy, Points are only present in reference only ("very good, points to X") and have no real impact. You can find the hourglasses and they will all be completely empty. Always.

3. Lacking basic RPG things.
No sleep. No hunger. No stamina. No morality. No attributes/perks (charisma, speech, strength, etc). No meaningful dialogue trees. Everything good RPGs have, Hogwarts Legacy does not.
There is no morality, you can do no wrong. Sure, pick a lock right in front of someone, and no one bats an eye. But in other RPGs, the guards are on you in an instant. Cast Unforgivable Curses? Nothing unusual here.

4. No House rivalries.
"ooh, some hotshot new student just joined, and they've been bumped up to a fifth year. They can do lots of things us regular students can't and they have special friends who are important members of staff." Surely in any other universe, this would set off a rivalry and a branching storyline with a satisfying payoff. BUT NO! No one hates you and you're everyone's friend, at least a friend to the four people you're allowed to talk to.

5. Gender neutral terms.
"You are a GENTLEPERSON and a scholar." "They" "They've"
Just seems weird at times. In English, it's all gender neutral terms. But is incredibly gender specific in other languages.

6. Tacked on homosexuality (in at least one instance) and token transgender character
There was a boycott for the game because of what JKR said about trans people. There's a trans person in the game, so it's all good right? BUT NO! The trans community hates the trans character purely because of the name. Sirona Ryan. They see SIRona RYAN. That's how they actually view it. Their deep af voice throws me off more than anything, really.

7. Two protagonist voices. Can pitch shift, but sounds awful.
Because WB couldn't be tasked with spending a few extra dollars to hire extra voice actors, they decided to use a horrible feature in UE4 to change the pitch of the voices. Unfortunately, it causes a robotic, warbled effect.

8. Two minute fetchquest side quests
Basically "over there is a thing, go there and tell me what you find. oh thank you, have this as a token of appreciation." >received a cosmetic appearance
Speaking of...

9. Inventory management is a joke
There are so many cosmetic items in the game and you can actually fill your inventory very quickly. Once your inventory is full, you can no longer collect items. Open a chest that contains a rare, high level outfit? Too bad your inventory was full, now you can NEVER come back and get it.
What's more, there's little point to cosmetic items when you can change the appearance of each piece. Just basically select the higher level cosmetics and change their appearance and sell the rest to get money you never use. Rinse and repeat.

10. Mobile game mechanics for herbology, potions, and beasts.
Want to grow a plant? 15 realtime minute wait
Want to brew a potion? Up to one minute wait.
Want to breed this rare beast for a main story mission? 20 real minutes.

11. No Quidditch
Saved by the fact the KBM controls for brooms are counter intuitive (can't even look up or down), there is no Quidditch in the game. Why? Because of a note you can find that has been redacted. The real reason? An injury...

12. Button mash fights
click click click click click 1 click click 2 3 click click 1 click X click Z click Q click Ctrl click click
Fights are overly easy but damage dealt is a joke.

13. PC port is absolute trash compared to console
Reminds me of another WB pc port that had a horrible release. Arkham Knight...
No patch for three weeks (as of March 30th) But that's not saying much considering each patch has broken the game more and more. People who have never crashed started crashing after the March 8th patch, textures are potato graphics for many, shadows become pixelated only feet from you, even on Ultra setting, Nvidia's official driver will cause the game to black screen, raytracing is like the sun shining in every room, etc.
Devs silent. Don't seem to care. "Don't worry about the pc port, look at how well the game is selling. So what if player counts have dropped by over 100k, it's sold so well."

14. Alohamora lockpicking
The Alohamora spell is supposed to instantly unlock a lock. In Hogwarts Legacy, you have to solve a minigame when using it. Just hold a button until you hear the gears spin. There are different "levels" of locks, levels 1 to 3 and you have to collect objects to be able to unlock the higher level locks. But once you do, you realize there's no difference between them at all, other than time gating to prevent you from unlocking important areas too soon. A level 1 lock is the same as a level 3 lock, there is absolutely no difference.
In any other RPG, lockpicking is far more intuitive and different "levels" of locks actually have different challenging traits to them.

15. The "Perfect World" scenario
No one hates you. Only bad people hate you. No House rivalries. Trans and gays are accepted. All races living in harmony. Haven't seen many Asians, though. And the only two are teachers and both teach you kamikaze and banzai, err broom flight and Bombarda.

16. Anemic endgame.
Beat the final boss. "You're a hero." "You need to study for your upcoming exams." "House Cup time." The end.
No exams, no new paths to follow, little replayability. It does let you explore, but that's only to go for 100%.

17. No option to buy the soundtrack
Soundtrack is awesome, but to my knowledge isn't for sale at this time.

Many have voiced their disappointment of the lack of romancing in the game. "Harry was flirting with Cho in year four." Hogwarts Mystery (also by WB) had romancing, including kissing. But that game was gender specific. hmm...

Spell pronunciation :P
Lu-mOHs, Lu-mAHs. LeviOOHHsa, LevioSSAAA. I thought correct pronunciation mattered.


This game is 7/10 at best and 5/10 at worst. It's the most basic RPG there is. It has some great moments, sure, but the whole package together isn't the 10/10 technological marvel people make it out to be.
Despite all the negatives, you can still enjoy the game for what it is; a bare bones RPG set in the Harry Potter world.

I had the pleasure(?) of receiving an early key to the beta through a giveaway by writing an email about why you should get a beta key, or something along those lines, this was 2016.
However, I didn't read the fine print about there being no spoken dialogue in that version and to use subtitles. Needless to say, I was confused by all the silence :P (hence the ? after "pleasure"). I played a good amount but didn't get too far. Only now have I had a chance to get to play it to (relative) completion, and what a ride.
Last time I played was September 29, 2016 with a total of 13.9 hours. I then played for real starting December 31, 2022, and upon completion, 42 hours total. That's about 28 hours of playing and exploring to completion (in my case).

Firstly, this game does NOT hold your hand, this cannot be stressed enough. You could play the entire game and avoid all the puzzles (but hey, that's an ending too, because choices matter). This is both a good and terrible thing because you could be stuck for an incredibly long time because you overlooked a small detail in a room or the instructions are essentially a two sentence explanation or a "not-to-scale" diagram. So just take a sip of some special coffee and get those mental gears turning.
For the good ol' Source Engine, there's many times where the game doesn't feel like Source, or even look like Source. There is so much quality here. The environments, from indoors to out, are all fantastic and have amazing detail. The maps are incredible and breathtaking at times. Makes you wanna kick back and relax with some special coffee.
Sound is decent, music is nice. Voice acting... while at first may sound off putting because of the accents and sometimes obvious script reading, it has its own charm that has grown on me fondly, especially Mark's voice.
Oh there's easter eggs, you best believe it. That and references and tongue-in-cheek things.

While not a horror game, there are many times where the game is genuinely creepy (in a good way). Don't drink special coffee and be ready for some dark and decrepit hallways.
Urbex is one of the things this game does that many other exploration games don't do well, in fact, it may be the ONLY game to make it feel right.
Great story, long and well played out in the world with multiple endings depending on how you play and completed tasks or discovered things.

The game did have an IndieGoGo campaign at one point, but actually failed in reaching its goal. Even so, the finished product is outstanding (as opposed to their current project...).

Bugs are present and are what you'd generally expect from a Source game, which are physics based bugs. So more than anything, you'll probably get caught between two boxes and end up dying from fall damage or dying from getting caught between a rolling gate or elevator even when there's plenty of room.

Much to discuss, mostly good stuff, but it's just a great game. Pick it up when/if you can.

Shorthand: A proof-of-concept marketing ploy done in an...ok way.

Longhand: Portal with RTX is essentially Nvidia's proof-of-concept for RTX Remix, which is supposed to allow modders to bring RTX and hd textures to older games. Problem is, anything involving RTX will tank performance if you aren't on the heavily touted 40 Series cards. RTX is still budding and games aren't implementing it in a revolutionary way currently. Portal with RTX is an example of what a basic fully RTX game is capable of, albeit with the loss of several dozen frames. If you're ok with sacrificing smoothness for quality (which is a misnomer in itself), then it's fine. Just tweak the settings and resolution and you're good to go. And hey, it's free.

First off, don't listen to the ones who are saying this one "massacres" the "brilliant plot" of the original. The plot is the same, key points are the same, characters are the same, etc. A few things changed here and there to make things (while being more game-y) more grounded and to make more sense than the original. The original is dated and clunky, terrible emotionless voice acting, and it just doesn't hold up today.

That being said, this was one amazing ride of a game. Gripping story that had me immersed, believable moments and fantastic voice acting and motion capture. Fantastic firefights that had me both running for cover and running and gunning. The cover based combat was so satisfying and fluent and made it feel worthwhile.
Few bugs here and there but it's purely hit or miss whether you'll have some.

Overall, the game has taken everything that brought Mafia 3 down, from a technical standpoint, and patched those up here. You won't see any flickering, no horrible skies, no spazzing out characters or vehicles, etc. Everything is nice and clean.

Not really much negative I can say about it at the moment, having just finished it. Free Ride is nice but lacks a TON of detail. The world is so large with lots of landmarks that go unused in the story and are just there in Free Ride. 95% of the game takes place in the bottom 50% of the map in the cities, the other 50% is countryside that goes unused except for like two missions.

All in all, this was a fantastic remake for today's standards and truly worth playing, whether you've played the original or not (like me). Just don't listen to the fanbois who say this is bad because they're biased.

People suddenly review bombing the game because "MUH FORCED DX12 BREAKS MUH NSFW MODS!"

Well guess what, Capcom made it so you can now select the previous DX11 version using the Beta Branch. Plus there's multiple workarounds besides the official one.

You know what, ♥♥♥♥ you.
The May 11th patch completely destroyed any hope left for this game.
IOI went back on their promises, removed every last vestige of enjoyment in Freelancer, and may have just killed Hitman 3.
Won't be long until the game servers are taken down.
Thanks, IOI. Great job. Alt+F4 your company.


| original review beyond this point |


The one year (negative) exclusivity agreement with this review is finished, and the review has been updated.

Hitman 3 is the final game in the World of Assassination trilogy, and is the pinnacle of the modern era of Hitman and a great sendoff until the (hopefully) next.

Mechanically, it's the same as the previous iterations, only with an added Camera tool; which can be used only for mission critical objectives, nothing more. It can't even take pictures, even though you can zoom in, add filters, and depth of field effects. So why not be able to take pictures?

Like with Hitman 2, Hitman 3 has removed many Escalations and extra content on locations from Hitman 2016, saving instead to restrict the unlocks from those behind completing X number of Featured Contracts.

Don't let that turn you off, there is still a fantastic amount of content available in Hitman 3. From suits, weapons, gear, etc. Plenty of ways to customize 47 into the ultimate, versatile and fashionable, assassin.

But enough of the nitty gritty, let's get on with the meat.

The Story
The conclusion to the trilogy.
In short, it's a great closure for the story (of the trilogy). The setup and introduction to Berlin was truly awesome and gave me immersion and captivated me, which a game hasn't done in some time. Surprisingly, there are THREE different endings; one being short because it's the "bad" end, but still; choices.

The Animations
Characters animations are what you'd expect. The scaling and hanging anims are kinda janky, but still alright. Some anims on 47 seem worse than previous games and sometimes feel bugged, but it's instance based on what you're doing.
But the biggest point on the anims are the cutscene cinematics.
Everyone can agree that Hitman 2016's cutscenes were amazing and felt like an actual movie, Hitman 2's were just still image slideshows (a true "huh?" moment), but Hitman 3's are a middleground; in-game pre-rendered scenes. They're alright, obviously not on the level of Hitman 2016's, but not the slideshows that were Hitman 2's. Often times the lip sync will be clearly off, especially in the in-game segment with Mr. Grey in the first mission. The newest map addition, Ambrose Island, is the worst with the in-game pre-rendered cutscenes; no emotion in anyone's face, completely off lip sync, clearly rushed out.

Graphics/Performance
As always, the graphics are great and there's lots of adaptive supersampling for better performance, some looking worse than others, coughAMDFidelitycough. Hitman 3 also has ray tracing support which, while nice to see reflections on windows, cars, and eyeglasses/sunglasses, isn't really necessary because; 1. it's VERY demanding and 2. the default screenspace reflections often times look better than the ray traced reflections. While the game is pretty well optimized it actually performs worse than Hitman 2 in some instances. Having level of detail on High or Ultra will cause insane drops on Colorado and Mendoza, but Mendoza is the worst and seems like a detail level of Medium is required to get over 100fps; adaptive supersampling does not help with this.

Elusive Targets
Yep still a thing, yep some can be completed in less than a minute, yep some feel rushed. But IOI introduced the Elusive Target Arcade, which allows you to play through three or four Elusive Target missions for a single unlock (not a suit). Failure will result in being locked out of that ET line for 12 hours instead of missing out forever. Official ETs are still a thing and you can still unlock the suits, would be nice if they permanently implemented ETs into Freelancer.
To make up for not having The Undying Elusive Target now, they added the option of unlocking the Miami ET suit by completing a challenge...on a different location entirely.

Unlocks
There's no shortage of unlocks, from suits to weapons and gear, and it doesn't look like IOI will be stopping anytime soon. However, a lot of classic unlocks from Hitman 2016, and some from Hitman 2, are locked behind completing X number of Featured Contracts so have fun grinding for them.

FREELANCER
The new roguelike gamemode will be releasing later this month and seems to be the mode that will bring new and constant life to Hitman 3 for a good while. Having played the Closed Technical Test, I can personally say it is challenging and offers tons of replayability and customization.
Check back later for a full review on this.

Bugs/Changes
Many have commented about the color grading changes done to previous games' maps, especially Marrakesh from Hitman 2016. Many of the older maps have taken on a slightly darker, more yellowish tone as opposed to the more lively and blue, sunlight-y tones of the previous games. As previously stated, lots of extra content from Hitman 2016 is still missing.
But my biggest personal gripe is with the smoke effects on Marrakesh. In the previous games, it was a gentle fog in the one area, now it's the blinding effect you see. I made a support ticket about this and was told this "is expected" because of "engine differences" meaning it will never be fixed.
Worn clothing and disguises will clip through themselves and into/through 47 himself. A modder took the time to fix nearly one hundred clothing items and released the mod[www.nexusmods.com] because IOI couldn't be bothered to fix it themselves.
While I am unable to test and verify it personally, the majority have reported a laundry list of issues with VR, so do not buy this specifically for the VR "experience."

Negative
Other than the parts mentioned above, the biggest negative for everyone is the always online requirement and the servers. At times, in the middle of your session, a dialogue box will pop up, pausing the gameplay, and say "Connecting to the Hitman servers. Please wait." Anyone else getting flashbacks of "What a horrible night to have a curse."
With this in mind, Hitman 3 is Verified on the Steam Deck. You heard that right, a game with an always online requirement...is 100% compatible with the Steam Deck...a console that is for on-the-go gaming in which a good internet connection may not always be the case. What were they thinking?
At the time of release, the purchase options and prices were insane. IOI rectified this, to an extent, with a free upgrade to the Deluxe Edition or the Seven Deadly Sins DLC to those who purchased the game on launch day through February 19th.
Not a negative for me, but many didn't like the Seven Deadly Sins DLC, just escalations for suit unlocks, "shouldn't have been paid," etc. In my opinion, Wrath was the most enjoyable one.

However, on the 26th, Hitman 3 purchase options will become more streamlined as Hitman 3 is being rebranded as "HITMAN: World of Assassination" which will "include access to HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 through our existing Access Pass system. Current HITMAN 3 owners will get a free upgrade to HITMAN World of Assassination on all platforms. We’re drastically simplifying the purchase experience for new players. HITMAN World of Assassination will be the single available option to start playing. ... There will be no more confusion over which edition to buy, what content you own, how to redeem Legacy packs or import locations, etc." Maybe this will be better for new potential buyers.

With the release of Freelancer on the 26th, there'll be a big patch. Maybe issues will be fixed, maybe not.
Either way, suit up

Back 4 Blood before release: "From the creators of Left 4 Dead" "From the creators of Left 4 Dead" "From the creators of Left 4 Dead" "From the creators of Left 4 Dead" "The game will be awesome, ignore the haters!" "It'll be better than Left 4 Dead because Valve ruined Turtle Rock's original vision."

Back 4 Blood after release: "From the creators of Left 4 Dead but not the studio that made it great." "From the creators of Evolve." "Buy our season passes for skins and extra content."


Current standings
B4B: 61% Mixed
L4D: 96% Overwhelmingly Positive

Valve carried L4D

343 lied, Halo died (not my video, but a great one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyltqWAhrvk

Brian Jarrard, Community Director for 343
"Battlepass and premium customization is the model for this game ... Was it a priority to make sure this game could generate revenue? Of course."
Sure, boss.[i.redd.it]

"I don't believe anyone at 343 thought not having Slayer was a 'good idea."
Joe Staten, 343 dev: "Removing Slayer was intentional."[external-preview.redd.it]

You can read what Brian said here.
And a comment pointing out many of the irregularities in what he said here.
All of the comments are pointing out everything that's wrong with Infinite and what 343 is and isn't doing.

Keep in mind, it was always touted since before the first Infinite multiplayer flight that EVERYTHING in the battlepass could be unlocked for free. You CANNOT UNLOCK ARMOR for free in the battlepass now. Just challenge swaps.

You cannot select a game mode.
You can level up and gain XP by ONLY completing challenges.
Sets can be purchased for real money in the store that cost either 1/4th the price of a AAA game, or twice as much. Take your pick.
Pineapple grenades armor addon and emblem set for $10.

btw, SLAYER IS NOT IN THE GAME

Do your own research. Don't waste your time on this game for now.
They laughed at everyone for saying "343 bad" ages ago, but who's laughing now?

#GreedOverGameplay
#FixTheFight