Recent reviews by Ludus Aurea

Game simply doesn't work.

Square Enix has done literally nothing to fix it since release, either. just like with FF13 port.

Even after finally getting past the intro movie to actually start a new game- I had 17 crashes in the process of trying - it's still not a smooth experience. I've verified game files. I've literally reinstalled it to a different SSD, switched to dx11, nothing matters. The game simply doesn't work. And if you do get it to launch, well, it has stuttering and insane frame drops.

Even after using mods to disable dynamic resolution scaling and forcing Vsync in Nvidia control panel, it still frame drops and stutters.

I9-13900k/ RTX4090/ 128 GB DDR5 so no it's not my hardware.

I finally got around to doing the Vault 88 content and I'm really not surprised the reviews are mostly negative.

This DLC takes one of Fallout 4's key appeals - an easy, snap together building system that allows for tons of creativity and freedom in building - and then both overly complicates it, and makes it not "easy snap together".

I had seen someone say that "The buildable space looks huge but it's not" and after playing with it for hours I understand. There are so many piles of dirt and by the time you finish all the Vault 88 experiments, so many corpses you can't move, that prevent you from building how and where you want it's not worth trying.

The Vault construction set has a ton of pieces but there's no explanation whatsoever how to use them correctly. The prefabs only fit together with other prefabs of the same set like "Common" or "Nursery" etc. or, I discovered after reading Reddit, the same named piece from a different set i.e a vault overseers window from the Overseer set snaps together with an Atrium Vault Overseers window. It makes sense when you see it work correctly but even so, many pieces still do not fit together very well.. Maybe with mods this works better but it just is not even remotely user friendly like the base game is. It honestly seems from the marketing screenshots this DLC was meant to mirror the Fallout Shelter experience by letting you build a cross section of a vault more so than to provide a playable game scenario.

You can even see in the screenshots on the store page that the various set pieces literally do not snap together like everything in the base game did.

Building an actual 3D vault with enclosed rooms that you can navigate seems close enough to impossible that it's just a waste of time trying to fight the game to get it done, if it is possible.

The quest line for this DLC is like 6 quests, too, right when you finally settle in it's over.

Maybe I'm just tired but I'm flat out disappointed with this DLC, especially after waiting 8 years to finally play it.

And I still have no idea how the conduits work because it was never explained.

If you give Beth. the benefitr of the doubt this DLC will you have you hearing Tool in your head . I know the pieces fit, I know the pieces fit, I know the pieces FIIITTT.

A great game, I'll post a real review soon.

Game runs extremely well - I've seen reports of over 200 FPS at 4K. To be honest, I haven't bothered to turn on Fraps or anything because it runs flawlessly. No stuttering. No asinine shader building the first (and every) time you launch it like Last of Us or Uncharted or tons of other games (Sony or otherwise).

The PC port allegedly supports both DLSS + FSR3 at the same time though I don't know why you'd use them both. It also has DLAA3 support. The one complaint I have is that the game seems incapable of saving settings. I constantly have to turn settings off every time I open the game like re-enabling HBAO+ or changing DLSS or low latency etc.

I haven't had any crashes, although on my 4090 I've noticed similar issues that happen with other games so I'd blame Nvidia for them and not Nixxes - like occasional flashing textures in the sky but only in certain areas.

The autosave system is weird and will fllood your system with saves but I doubt they would ever be an issue - you can also manual save just like on PS4 and PS5.

DualSense works perfectly - all the haptics like the steel vibrations with the sword, all the touchpad controls like sheathing/flute/bowing/guiding wind work just like on PS5, and the controls feel even more responsive probably just because the game is running way better than on PS5.

If you own this on PS5 there isn't really much here to be honest besides maybe the eventual possibility to mod and/or cheat, and it doesn't look significantly better. But if you don't own this on PS5 or PS4 or only own it on PS4 it's a definite upgrade and a game worth experiencing.

The new PS overlay is also way less intrusive and clunky than a lot of ther overlays like Ubisoft, Rockstar, Battlenet, or EA. It's also way less functional than the Xbox overlay but it does the one thing it's supposed to which is to give trophies. There is not a separate PC category if you already played it on PS, unlike the way some Xbox Windows Store games have a separate entry than the console version - so no double dipping here.

Overall just a good game, I will never call it amazing but it's a good game. Solid gameplay for the most part (although Unyielding Sword Parry timing is still garbage IMO) - the combat seems much more fluid than on PS because of the framerate, the game has a stellar soundtrack, and a lot of the main story missions are epic. Definitely one of the most beautiful games ever made, too.

The part of RE4 that actually mattered - the inventory management.

This game takes the inventory management of RE4 and makes it a puzzle game where each level has different items and a differently shaped or differently sized inventory. Instead of simple rectangular or square items, they are shaped more like Tetraminos or whatever Tetris puzzle pieces are called, Save Room features the same mechanics of rotating, combining items, manually loading weapons through the inventory, healing yourself to get rid of healing items and free up space, and features an RE4-esque soundtrack.

A ridiculous game concept but a welcome and fun one that can be challenging in later levels, and it's on sale for $2 right now. Get your RE4 inventory fix without actually playing RE4.

Now that the game is playable I've changed my review.

It's fun to spread democracy to those who need it, usually with friends because single player is difficult and simply not what this game was designed for. There were network and matchmaking issues at first but those seem to have been resolved. The poor performance on RTX4090 on ultra supersampling has not, though.

Regardless, this game is the closest you'll get to a Starship Troopers game for now. The music is epic, the combat is fun and cinematic at the same time. The planets are cool, the bug types are different enough that they present some strategic variety. The quips, the dialog, the lore all cool. The Starship Troopers feeling never goes away thanks to infinite termonids either, bug holes, extraction countdowns, abandoned outposts and that feeling of running out of ammo while being outnumbered. But you have infinite cooldowns on your call-ins.

Now that I've been able to actually play online without getting booted or people dropping, it's good fun and I recommend it. The battle pass is a little grindy, but if you have time to spend playing this game then it's not relevant.

But the co op is terrible. It's a drop in multiplayer where the only way to PUG is to randomly encounter strangers at different mission spots. You have to invite people directly to a party to do it otherwise. Like most multiplayer games, it suffers from its party design and from other people's bad internet and local networks. Of the entire 3 co-op missions I was able to play, my partners dropped on all of them, one half-way through the mission which I then had to struggle through alone and died repeatedly, one within minutes and one while we were waiting for the Pelican. It's not my network, and even if it was, how would I know that given there's no tester built in to the game?

This game forces a mandatory EAC program no one's ever heard of and I can't imagine why. Won't someone please think of the poor bugs? They need a fair fight too? Who cares if anyone cheats, it's a PvE only game.

Often times you literally can't even return from a mission, the game will load eternally. The game loads faster than on PS5 I hear but of course it does - but what about when it doesn't load at all? On top of the loading issues, on top of the mandatory kernel level rootkit to play this game, the performance is simply embarrassing. I9-13900k, only Samsung Evo Pro NVME SSDs on PCIe4, RTX4090, 64 GB DDR5-6600 here. The game struggles hard even on the highest FSR settings to maintain a solid framerate. I can't imagine how bad it is on PS5.

I want to like this game. I want to play a multiplayer coop pve game. This game. But that doesn't seem like it's a realistic expectation.

Good game so far although I've yet to experience everything. Starfield has the best NPCs to date in a Bethesda game and their animations actually look like they took some criticism to heart from previous games. The space combat is frustrating when you start out as the game will tell you to do things like target engines, withotu explaining how, and like all space games it feels like no matter what you do the enemy is ALWAYS behind you hammering you with lasers so it may just be an issue of mouse/keyboard controls being trash for flight which has always been the case.

The ship customization and building system seems unexplained and comes without a tutorial, but I may just not have played enough.

The foot combat is solid and the companion NPCs are the best they've ever been, and the crafting systems have been mostly simplified and carried over from FO4.

One day I'll hopefully finish this and have a more thorough opinion.

Pretty cool survival game so far - very familiar if you play other Survival/or games. The art style reminds me of OG Diablo 1 and 2 but it plays as you would expect with the ability to permanently increase stats with gold, do quests, get equipment and abilities, choose different maps and characters.

Insomniac's Spider-Man is probably the best Spider-Man game to date.

The traversal and movement mechanics are all very smooth and engaging, and it's fun to web swing around NYC although it is only Manhattan.

Combat is generally fun but eventually gets boring when every fight ends up playing out the same. Some challenges exist like Screwball gadget challenges to break that monotony up but they are only in the DLC, and regardless of what suit power or gadgets you use, it is basically rinse and repeat until it's finished.

As for the overall gameplay, Remastered is fille dto the brim with cliche, generic, boring AAA tropes - collectibles, timed challenges, randomly generated crimes, enemy bases, more collectibles, and stuff like that. Way too many of them, almost as bad as Assassin's Creed 1 and occasionally worse. Only better because of 10 years of wisdom since then produced trackable collectibles in the in game map.

The story is completely predictable if you are at all familiar with Spider-man, but it's still a beautiful game with a fun story that's worth playing.

The game has significant performance issues and crashes at random on modern hardware, but it's not nearly bad enough to make it unplayable.

Trash port just like Remastered. Not just like Remastered, actually, because I beat the entire game and the DLC with maybe 7 crashes. Miles crashes not only all the time but more than Remastered. I could not even play 1 hour of this game before it crashed 3 times. I've verified game cache and completely reinstalled it twice but it's literally unplayable.

Literally one of the worst ports I've ever seen. This game corrupts save files non-stop. In a 15 hour game I've spent nearly as much time verifying cache and playing with save files as I have actually playing.

I9-13900k, RTX4090 on 546.17, 64 GB DDR5-6600, no other games have this issue. Would be great to actually play the game.

Absolute garbage. Horrendous netcode, super low tick rate, even worse bullet spread than GS:GO which is actually impressive. I grew up playing CS before people ever heard of it and this is just honestly the worst PVP game I may ever have played.

You know your game is good when you hit a dude 3 times with xm1014 at close range, he takes like 52 damage, and you die in one hit.

Not only that but they literally deleted CS:GO from Steam. Some of us OG's actually paid for CS:GO when it was a premium game back in 2012. It is no longer in the database and only accessible by adjusting the launch properties to run a different game version, and even then you can only play on third party servers. That means all the stat tracking is gone, and the achievements were deleted from your profile. So Valve has removed a game we paid for and replaced it with this. It's not okay when any other developer/publisher does it, and Valve certainly doesn't get a pass for doing it.

I'd pay for a better game like Insurgency 50 more times before I'd keep this crap on my computers or play it again. I thought Battlefield 5 was bad, haha.