Recent reviews by Dr. Neurohax

Has come a long way since launch and the developers deserve a tremendous amount of respect for the dedication they've shown to this game.

One of those games that's in everyone's Top 5 VR Games list both in fun and number of controllers/TVs destroyed while playing.

For people that haven't played JC2, go play that. JC3 adds a few mechanics that are nice (plus better graphics), but somehow lacks the charm of JC2. You will want to 100% JC2. 100% on JC3 would be self flagellation.

For those that have played JC2, this isn't a terrible follow up, but definitely not worth the asking price because it feels so unbalanced. Some early parts feel lovingly crafted and you can see where this could've a been great game. But, the story falls apart pretty quickly, it's a technical mess, and there is no indication that it will ever be fixed.

On the non-technical side, the story starts off strong, has some great characters, and has a good amount of mystery. Unfortunately, all the story becomes incredibly boring and predictable, and the main plot missions (only side missions are from DLC) are stilted and repetitive, or a kind of tedious mixed with nonsensical. Also, if you enjoy liberating the towns and playing it as an open world game, most of the missions become trivial. Freeing a town means rebels move in, so when the game throws enemy troops at you, the rebels block them or they don't spawn at all. It's clear they want you to drive by a base during a few missions, which would attract attention, but if you liberated them, nothing happens at all.

There are a number collectibles that are okay, but poorly 'paced'. For example, there are some audio tape collectibles where you hear the psychology of the evil dictator and how he got into power, which are actually pretty well done. But, you only get 2-5 sentences, so following the timeline is difficult (especially since you don't regularly interact with the people discussed and forget who is who). On top of that, there are several tapes placed at the final objective in towns you liberate. Capturing a town sometimes sets off a radio message. so you have two audio tracks playing over each other. Not a big deal, but this is a good example of how the game feels slapped on top of the open world aspect without proper design considerations.

Like JC2, there are challenges - blow up this much stuff in this time, fly this obstacle course, etc. However, these are now tied to equipment and ability upgrades, and are given a rating tied to those unlocks. This is okay in theory, but here is where the run and gun sloppiness that makes JC2 fun is at odds with JC3 and the technical problems of JC3 start to creep in. First off, vehicle control is terrible, at least with keyboard and mouse. Same goes for the wing suit. It isn't a case of different vehicles controlling better/worse than others. They just all feel wrong; like the speed is too slow, but the objectives are made harder to make up for it. No idea how to explain it. After trying a dozen or so challenges a few times and failing all but 1, I simply gave up. They are beyond unfun. But they're CHALLENGES, you say? Yeah, but they're challenging in that "this was poorly designed or hinges on a particularly weak game play element" not in the "I want to get better at this to make the game more fun" way. I wouldn't even care that they feel broken if potentially fun upgrades weren't locked behind them. Also, there's no map HUD, so you're constantly referring to the PDA, where there are no markers for things like 'bases with a helicopter', so you never know where to go to get specific vehicles.

On the technical side, whoa boy. If you played JC2 and thought that was a bit janky, it is nothing compared to JC3. First off, it took a good 2 hours just to get this game running. There's a pointless intro movie that can't be skipped unless you use mods. Turns out all mods have been broken for months. Broken how? They break the online login system, so that you can't log in AND can't play offline. For a single player game. It's very clear that the totally superfluous online features were added to make the DRM less egregious (requires reactivation with hardware changes). Also, the game will pop up sudden disconnects randomly. And then there are the random crashes, the lack of and FOV slider, the graphical glitches, the targeting glitches, etc. During the first 15 minutes I got stuck inside the world geometry. Reload the last quick save? Well, there's no quick save or manual save, so that's a roll of the dice. There is a 3rd party program for changing FOV, but breaks the cut scenes slightly and further reduces stability). Load times on my NVMe SSD felt like HDD load times. In the PDA UI, the cursor was always offset about two full cursor sizes below the point I clicked.

Finally, the two story DLCs I played were about 50% just traveling to the location and back. They were good action-wise and the rewards for completing them were good, but they felt very detached from the main story and confusing depending on the order you did everything.

All these problems and it's been a year since the last patch, so it's safe to assume the game is dead. With the skill they've shown in handling online accounts and the rate of updates so far, I 100% expect this game to be unplayable in 5-10 years, either from OS/Steam/driver compatibility issues or online service changes (thanks to unwanted online features and Denuvo DRM). Oh, there's a whole abandoned island that was probably for DLC, but they apparently gave up on trying to milk any more money from players, too.

If you don't trust my review, go look at the discussion forum. Enjoy reading the 1,446 comments in ONE THREAD addressing what the community would like fixed or added. Or the Q & A thread with the devs that leaves half of the questions unanswered (that person has not been on Steam in 500+ days). I won't be buying another Avalanche game.

Short version: Great story and characters make most of the obvious, numerous bugs bearable, but more unexpected modes of play will break the immersion entirely. Using the Pip Boy felt like trying drive a screw into a 2x4 with a screwdriver made of Play-Doh. With my face. Which is also made of Play-Doh.

Extremely considerate game. Ensures healthy gaming session length by routinely crashing, or progressively taking longer and longer to loot items.

Some of the problems are my fault. I have a policy of either weapon/armor degrading OR onerous backpack carry limits, not both. So, I added a ton of backpack space and 1/2 way through the game, it took ~10 second just to open the looting UI. Even towards the end, when I started selling off stuff more aggressively, it just draaaaagged. (This is even after applying the 3rd party patch to recognize >4GB or memory.) And even that would be forgivable if the inventory display wasn't a nightmare. All the non-list UI elements are tiny, there's really odd mouse velocity/acc, and you can only see few items at a time. Can't reorder items, flag/favorite them, make an ingredient list, assign to a weapon slot, etc. There are mods that help with some of this, but it's not enough. You just have to give up on using the right tool for the job because swapping anything around is a huge hassle. You'll snipe something at a far distance with the sniper rifle and just stick with that gun until the target is munching on your face. Otherwise, this is a good chunk of the game:

Fire at baddie, pull up PipBoy, click inventory button, fruitlessly grasp at the scrollbar that is thinner than the cursor and slowly swaying side to side, drag scroll bar to Shotgun, realize you want the Caravan Shotgun, so scroll up again, wait, no you have that special Sturdy Caravan Shotgun, so scroll back down, realize you bought a weapon mod recently that hadn't been installed, since there's no way to tell if you have an uninstalled mod for a weapon, you open the mod screen, nope must have been for something else, hey that reminds me that I haven't checked to see if I picked up any skill books, lemme check that, ah yes, I have 6 of them sitting in there doing nothing, use books, okay back to the gun, now arrow over to the ammo selection, forget if what you're shooting at has armor, exit Pip Boy, ah no it doesn't, wait, am I still wearing my radiation suit instead of armor, ugh, back to Pip Boy, Apparel, Armor, okay let's do this, exit Pip Boy, aaaaaand your companion just one shotted the guy. gg.

Using the Pip Boy is like using a Windows CE phone. It's familiar (iconic even!), does everything you need, and every time you use it, you die a little inside.

Well written story and complex characters make the game worth playing, but it's a buggy mess and does an objectively terrible job conveying information to the player. Not enough to prevent appreciating it, but definitely cuts down on the fun factor.

Also, you HAVE TO give up and stay in a full roleplay character mindset, or you'll quickly see how broken the many internal systems are. I played as a good guy, then decided to turn evil. My companion told me she didn't approve and was going to leave me. About 10 times. I've killed everyone. Not everyone in Vegas. EVERYONE (except one town, and I'm sure a few stragglers). She's still with me, and there's a 50/50 chance that the few respawning troops I bump into will see me as an enemy. The game lets you 'do anything' but responds to those actions inconsistently. Immediate consequences are usually appropriate, but the choices fail to trickle into the larger game.

Fallout 3 was similar for me, which is why I put off playing NV, but I'm glad I played both. That being said, I have no interest in experiencing this frustration again, so I'll probably be skipping Fallout 4.

I want to recommend this game, I really do, but I just can't. Great graphics, sound, control options, and an expansive universe, but lost between 'game' and 'simulation'.

Within 5 hours you'll see 99% of what it has to offer and there's very little driving you forward. Grind missions (the only type of mission since there is no story) are either "carry this to here" or "kill this guy". "Kill this guy" would be fun, but the combat is somehow totally unrewarding - slow, limited weapons selections, and uninspiring effects. Go watch a few clips on YouTube if you're curious. The combat feels too simulation-like and the multiplayer aspects (while better than at launch) are almost unnecessary. There are billions of systems, and while people try to flock to Sol, outside of the immediate vicinity, you're probably not bumping into many people.

So, play it like a relaxing sim, right? Nope. If you're trying to belt out missions to save up for that new ship, you'll be confronted constantly by hostile NPCs. They have no motivation and are either stupidly under- or over-powered. Good thing the security services are there... well, 9 times out of 10 they'll zip between you are the target, take 1 shot and turn on you and place a bounty on your head. It's like the game wants you to play the 'game parts', so it just shoves them in your face, but has no idea how to handle it if you actually engage.

I backed it after it left alpha (so my Steam hours aren't accurate), and thought I was investing in this game that was going to grow. It feels like I bought the shell of a game and am being asked to pay full game prices to get any real 'game' content in the expansions. I wouldn't mind in game cosmetic microtransactions, reduced price expansions, or even an in-game currency that could be bought for money to speed up buying new ships. There's no way to make this game 'pay to win' since there is no 'winning', so I don't see the harm.

It feel like slap in the face to early backers. "Give us more money so you can get the full game, instead of the pretty tech demo you have now." Nah, that's okay.

Do you enjoy enjoyment? Are you entertained by entertainment? Does happiness make you happy? Then you should own KSP. It isn't for everyone, though. If you are not a sentient life form, then this game is NOT for you. Everyone else should own it. Except Danes. Ha! Imagine a world where we let the Danes own video games... that's just crazy talk.

(No spoilers in this review.) Great game for any Walking Dead fans. It hits you really hard right up front and doesn't let up for the entire journey. It faithfully recreates that sense of moral ambiguity present in the show, which might be off-putting for people that haven't seen the show, but forces you to gauge how much faith you have in humanity. You are constantly forced to balance vulnerability against stability and every relationship is a battle between loyalty and survival. The characters don't fall into simple archetypes, and where lesser games would settle for simple and predictable categories, TWD manages to create portrayals of realistic people, complete with indecision, perspective, selfishness, insecurity, and compassion.

If I had one complaint, it would be that sometimes it seems like the child you play as controls a group of adults. They mask it somewhat as subtle manipulation (you rarely make outright demands), but there are a few points where you wonder why the group's survival is so readily swayed by a kid. But, like I said, the writers do a good job of hiding it. For example, if you want someone to rejoin the group, you don't just say, "Hey, come back to the group." Instead you use vulnerabilities you discovered to persuade them over the course of several dialogue choices.

If you've never seen the show and never played the first season, this season stands on its own well. I had forgotten much of the first season and didn't have the save files on the computer I played Season 2 on, and it felt perfectly natural. There is some minor crossover between the game and the TV show in Season 1, but the games do a great job of being self contained within TWD universe.

I'm wondering how long Telltale can keep this series going, though. There are multiple endings - about 4 significantly different outcomes - which means multiple start points for Season 3. That means either those different endings converge, which leaves the player feeling like their choices had no real consequence, or they diverge, which quadruples the amount of writing and animating. Either way, I think the game will either end with Season 3 or 4. The only ways around it would be to introduce another entire set of characters, in which case they should really make it a separate game, or to put in ten times the amount of resources for a game that the average player will see 1/20th of. I just hope they end it before the story becomes stale or they're forced to resort to cheap tricks. A reboot, like the game did compared to the TV show, would be fine, but I have a feeling we are going to see Clementine's story come to a close soon.