Recent reviews by Left 4 Shred

What should have been an update was instead released as a standalone game that is still $60 6 years later and needs mods to work properly. If you want to play Skyrim in VR, this is how you do it. Just buy it on sale though.

This is way too expensive. Nearly the cost of a full game for 6 characters, two of which are story characters. On top of that the announcer voices are not included in the unlockable content this comes with related to the DLC characters. Instead, when a character drops their announcer voice is put on the premium cash shop for an extra $10. Assuming all the characters get an announcer voice that would increase the cost of all the content releasing with this up to $99.99 from $39.99.

NRS not only gutted the content from the base game to sell it back to us in the content shop. They've done the same thing with the kombat pack. It's such a shame to see NRS treat their franchise and us the fans with such disrespect. This is single-handedly the most expensive MK in history and has such little content. It's absolutely shameless.

TL;DR
You either release the game for free and have the free to play cash shop model or you sell the game for $110 and have everything in game able to be unlocked reasonably.

I cannot recommend this game for a simple reason. NRS is charging $70 for this game. $110 for those of us who bought the premium edition. This is a AAA Title being sold at the new inflated full price. Despite that they've gutted the game of content and are selling that back to you piecemeal through a cash shop at premium prices. Tired of uninspired palette swaps for scorpion? Well spend $10 on this single skin where he actually looks different. Want an extra fatality? $12 dollars. If you bought a single skin at that price for every character you'd spend more than twice the cost of the game for a drop in the bucket's worth of content that MK11 would have had for free.

This game is predatory and it shouldn't be accepted. The original MK is the game that got me into gaming and it's such a shame to see it devolve into a disgusting example of the problem with the gaming industry of today. The foundation of this game is solid but everything else around it is lackluster because they pulled nearly everything worth getting from the game and slapped it into the cash shop. This is why they got rid of the kypt. Why spend koins to unlock content when you can spend cash.

NRS, you should be ashamed. Ed Boon, we expected and deserved better.

This is one of those reviews where if there was a neutral option I would choose that over Yes and No.

Is Starfield bad? No. With the exception of its graphics is it nearly the same game Bethesda has been releasing over and over again since Oblivion came out in 2006? Yes.

If you're the kind of person who can still get hours of enjoyment out of Skyrim and Fallout 4 all these years later then you will absolutely enjoy this game. If you're one of the many who are tired of how stagnant the Bethesda RPG formula has become then you'll likely be disappointed or, like myself, just confused why things keep getting watered down instead of expanded upon. Wondering why, nearly 20 years later, NPCs seem to have less life than they did in Oblivion, Skyrim, hell, even Morrowind. Walking through towns having the most bug eyed NPCs with the stiffest shoulders just looking at you in what appears to be the most numb form of terror. Less reactive to your presence than ever before.

I could sit here and talk about how traveling between systems is tedious. How you have to open a menu to jump to a new system, which I'm fine with, only to then be scanned for contraband only to then reenter the same menu, click on the same destination you already did once, and fast traveling a second time to finally arrive to your destination. I could talk about the MMO-esque loot system they've gone with this time around where enemies don't drop everything they're wearing like in older games from BGS and how removing things like armor doesn't remove it from the model. But I'm sure many are talking about that in other reviews.

The biggest point to me is just how little effort they have put in over the last 17 years in overhauling their systems. Many will point out that they're using the same engine that they did for Oblivion, and while that is true, it's something being parroted by people who don't realize nearly every studio does this. No one makes a new engine from scratch for each game, those that have their own engine build upon it over time. Creation Engine 2 is an updated version of Creation Engine which is an updated version of Gamebryo which was used on Morrowind. Unreal Engine came out in the late 90's and yet UE5 games aren't said to be on an old engine from the 90s. The problem with CE2 is it feels like all they really do is expand upon the graphical capabilites of it while barely ever touching any of the actual gameplay mechanics leaving you with a very pretty game that plays like games from multiple generations ago. I don't think that in itself is a bad thing. Take genres like Mario-esque platformers and I feel like that is timeless enough that it's age doesn't get felt. But that isn't the case with BGS RPGs, not to me at least and perhaps it isn't to you either.

Speaking of the game being pretty, performance is abysmal for me. I've heard very mixed reviews about this. People who claim to not meet the requirements saying it runs on high at 60fps for them. Meanwhile, I exceed the recommended requirements and can barely keep 45fps on any graphical setting. Dropping from high to low nets me an extra 5-10fps depending on where I am. Todd Howard says performance is fine and if yours isn't then it's time for an upgrade. Which, fair. However, if that is absolutely true then the "Recommended Specs" need to be updated since, again, I exceed them and receive poor performance. So, your mileage may very.

The last thing I can say for now is that is hasn't been super buggy for me. Despite the fact that the game runs terribly, I can at least say I haven't had any bugs I'm used to seeing in BGS games. All I can recall seeing so far is my helmet has blocked my vision by I'm guessing clipping in front of the FPV camera like three times in 10 hours of gameplay. I've not fallen through the world a single time.

If you're a die hard BGS fan then you'll likely enjoy this title. If you're tired of how stale and continuously watered down the gameplay has become over the years then maybe you'll want to pass on this one. I went in with low expectations and got exactly what I was expecting from it. Again, I don't think the game is bad. It's a Bethesda rpg. Oblivion 6. Just with a lot of dead space on dead worlds but honestly it's a space game I can forgive barren planets because that's most of what's out there anyway. But, yeah. To me it ultimately feels like a prettier but inferior The Outer Worlds. I've been a BGS fan since 2002 so I don't enjoy writing this kind of review. But, alas, nothing in this game stands out to me. I'm not super far into it yet and fully plan on updating this the further into the game I get. But so far, even with the few new features I've gotten to play with, nothing stands out to me. A lot like Cyberpunk 2077, aside from the graphics this game feels like it could have been released at any point in the last 20 years. It's a paint job in place of an upgrade.

Also, almost forgot, my load times haven't as terrible as many I've read. I don't know if I'm just lucky or it's because I only have SSDs and M2s.

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It gets good about 200 hours in.

War Thunder

There is Blood. There is Bacon.

This game sucks. You'll love it.

I overall recommend this game. It's gorgeous and I've really enjoyed the story of fending off a Christian cult. The gun-play isn't anything to write home about but it also isn't bad for the most part.

My only real gripes with this title have to do with how terrible the sniper rifles are. Even with the perk that makes you more accurate, the rifles in this game are remarkably inaccurate. You line up your cursor and the bullet exits the gun about 4 inches above, below, or to the side of the barrel. The enemy will be in range and in sight and you'll still miss by a mile. For some reason they fed the sniper rifles a level of RNG that no other gun has. They have more spread than automatic rifles.

Spawning and despawning is handled terribly in this game. If you get out of your vehicle to grab something, there's a high chance your vehicle will despawn if you move 30 feet away from it. Just don't look at it for a moment and it's gone.

Similarly, you can clear out a road block, turn around to get back in your vehicle, and since you walked 30 feet away and didn't look at that road block for 5 seconds all the enemies respawn.

The AI teammates are incredibly stupid. You would think having a second would make the game easier, but they need their hands held and they refuse to give you their hand. They'll body block you in firefights, they'll mess up sneaking missions, they'll just stand there being shot refusing to fight back. They rarely ever pick you up when you're down. And often will despawn completely when downed if you're more than 30 feet away from them.

It's harder to kill the common cougar than it is to defeat literally any of the game's bosses.

Overall the game is fun and is one you can just kinda lean back and enjoy. But where it's bad it has no reason to be. This is absolutely a game you play for the story and the story alone.