Recent reviews by Red Robin

probably one of the better remakes we have had in this generation of remakes and that is saying something, the DLC is something to be desired but overall is pretty good but the original did have assignent ADA which this one does not so thats a bit of a shame and the equivlant of platform world is again a bit to be desired but overall this game is awesome and deserves recognition

Better than the BETA to be honest

This game makes you a god …… I could be a plank and leave this review at that and say yes get it but in all honesty what type of reviewer would I be if I left it there.

Anyway in this game of the late 2000’s you play as outbreak “survivor” Alex Mercer, an unfortunate circumstance of a viral breakout in New York City has turned you into a weapon, a shapeshifter to be more precise, your memory is gone and your only closest relative is being interrogated by black ops related to the outbreak, what do you do?

Well first thing is you don’t grab a bite to eat, you find out what happened to you and Alex in this case does just that by killing and consuming every living thing in sight and in turn take memories along the way to uncover the mystery.

When it comes to the look of the game it does seem ironically prototype-like with graphics that do seem pretty dated by 2022 but for the time that this came out it does server its purpose of total anarchy really well especially when it comes to the look of the city which takes up quite a bit of interesting things that this game has to offer. The game in the very beginning shows a city unaffected by war or anything but shows a perfect city atmosphere, cars going the way they should, people going about their day doing menial things and then part way through the game the city stats to become unrecognisable and parts of the city just become warzones in of themselves.

The main gameplay loop of the game is moving around the area attacking anything in sight and in turn gain XP to go towards new upgrades and mutations which will then help towards missions which will then progress the story in turn making you a god . . . . well not fully but Jesus would blush at the body count you have by the end of the game put it that way.

The overall progression of the game when it comes to story and character sort of goes hand in hand with each other with missions being locked behind upgrade walls and the character themselves seemingly becoming more and more powerful as time goes on but where it excels is the sense of hero vs villainy which this game symbolises and practically oozes from the atmosphere, by the time you get half way through the game you start to think is all of this bloodshed worth it but the game does it in a way that doesn’t leave you being a Debbie downer you practically laugh at the way cheesy one liners come across and the how the game tries to take itself seriously and I like to think there is some satire at play here especially with how dark and brooding our main protagonist is.

Every so often there will be a chapter transition which will recap the past events and sort them into a quick “previously on” type of cinematic which is something I like to see as most of the time you’ll be spending time running around taking lives left right and centre blowing more s**t up than the US did the middle east.


As a run of the mill god like free roaming game it is something quite unique for the time and I find this an absolute blast to play again after all of these years and will find myself reminiscing about the genocide of millions of people in my early teens and can definitely see myself replaying [PROTOTYPE] 2 again after a long stint and seeing if that holds up too but for this game in terms of a rating I would say its around a 7.5 / 10 and the main reasoning for it not being an 8 or a 9 seen as ive praised this game so much up to now is that the game does not seem to know what it wants to be and seems to refocus its direction a lot when it comes to gameplay and sort of trips up on itself quite often.

L.A Noire is one of those games that I always thought was an experiment on R* part especially when it came to showing what their Havok engine could do at the time you can see this throughout most of their promotional material, but overall Team Bondi made something I think has still got people coming back years later and that is something to behold.

L.A Noire is a delve into the 1940’s era of detective stories and looks at the situations of post war America. You play as newly recruited Detective Phelps and join him in his journey of being a on the beat cop to being one of the halls of fames in detective history. On his journey you will be greeted by all kinds of interesting characters and will be met with the grizzliest of crime scenes. Whilst playing the game you will be tasked with finding the people responsible for Murders, Arson, Car accidents etc. by use of interrogation (no not smacking them around like The Punisher) and by finding the right evidence to place them at the scene of the crime and support a conviction, some suspects may break and give a confession and some the evidence may leave you at an impasse and some may get away but it is down to you how to go about the investigation.

The game opens with a from what I can gather good representation of Hollywood during the mid-40’s and with this it introduces the first few characters that you will be working with and with this in mind comes one of the pro’s slash cons of this game and its age. At the time of the game being released like we said earlier this was an experiment of the game’s engine and at the time their technology MotionScan was the most costly of the games $50 million budget and with this presented with some really top notch actors produced really good looking models with body language and facial structure which would be apart of the games primary loop especially when it comes down to the interrogation sequences, now with this game being released in 2011 the game has aged “questionably” to be said at best, the game overall finds itself struggling to sequence the facial animations correctly and sometimes with the game being at a higher frame rate this can be noticeably different especially when it came to comparing the Xbox 360 of this game and the PC version.

The overall gameplay of this game is experimental to say the least there’s the investigation portion of game play that we’ve mentioned before and then there’s chase sequences as well as shooting scenes and car chases but none of them are either good nor bad similar comparisons to this are GTA V’s minigames around its world such as the golf course which is neither good nor bad as a minigame the same thing can be said for these sequences.

There are some questionable differences when it comes to control and with this in mind, I’m going to be comparing this to the switch version of this game and would like to experiment with the Steam Deck version/transition of this game later but for now the switch vs pc is probably the way to go in terms of portability. The game has some decent controls on the pc and are set as standard overall, mouse control and camera movement are smooth overall, and button prompts as well as feedback is prompt and done well from a communication perspective on the switch version however this is altered to incorporate the switch’s capability with touch screen controls. The touch screen on the Nintendo switch allows the player to direct the character on screen to walk to different areas similar to a point and click game with this it allows full touchscreen capability when it comes to interrogation and navigation of the small journal Phelps keeps with him and something about this works well for the gameplay and with it being on a smaller screen the motion capture is still something to behold but again with tis age it does show but nowhere near as much as the pc version.

With the PC version there are moments where the game does load quite a few assets in at once and dependent on the pc you have it can be done with no hiccups in frame rate however on the switch the game almost buckles to 10 fps during these moments especially around case #15 but overall the games performance is good and has some areas where it hinders itself but the overall story of the game and its gameplay make for an interesting experience and the overall time for the game in terms of story is around the 12 hour mark and maybe more especially when it comes to tougher cases.

This game is something I think to behold as a hidden gem but also something like a time capsule especially when it comes to its experimental-type gameplay and graphics and I would honestly recommend it and give it a score of 8.5/10 reason for -0.5 off what I would normally rate it is because of the age of the game and like stated before “questionably”.

Well, here we go again and holy sheet is this an improvement over the very first game and with this (going to be) lengthy review we are going to go through each game and there differences to previous games.

Well Mass Effect was one of those games that sometimes felt unfinished in certain areas, the clunkiness to movement and the overall presentation felt that it was a game that was released earlier than intended from the combat to the graphics whereas this sort of “Renewal” of the series from better loading times with optional conversations to better VOD’s allowing for cleaner graphical rendering to allowing more particles in explosions and water splashes to be rendered following updates with better graphic card capability and bug fixes this whole entry feels that it’s been redone but really it hasn’t its more or less been updated.

The conversations do not feel as messy as they used to be with certain conversations showing cleaner animations, but these do still suffer with shepherds’ eyes being a little too psycho looking which is where the original seems to power over this edition, but this is such a slight con compared to the pros this edition has.
Combat does not feel so erratic anymore it feels controlled but at the same time ♥♥♥♥ could go off at any point with how the enemy AI reacts to damage and overall Win/Loss the abilities that are used feel that they do have a much better effect I don’t know why this is this could be down to the fact that the levelling system has been reworked to fit with the one time playthrough of the game scheme which a lot of players used to do with this entry in the series but now this has been reworked to fit the “classic” levelling system as well as the reworked it offers a lot of potential for second playthroughs to get those tricky parts of the story done and reworked to fit the later games.

The HUD has also been redesigned and cleaned up when it comes to the squad mate command system as simple commands such as moving to a location has been cleaned up to a point where its easier with quick inputs such as Q and E to send one teammate or the other to a location much similar to Mass Effect 2’s systems, the Shield bar has been redesigned also with a long stretched bar above the health instead of a normal health bar and a singular cell bar that will go from white to black showing the state the shields are in which was difficult to tell weather you were on full shields or 50% shields.

One problem that I have with the game but am also fine with is the fact that one of the DLC’s is missing from the game which is Pinnacle station which from what I remembered was a pain in the ass to play but it would have been nice to see this implemented but unfortunately the developers who developed this part of the game was not the main developers Bioware but another development team which is a tell tale thing when you see how the DLC plays out lost the games code from what I have heard recently which is a shame but for some is a blessing.

When it comes to an overall preference, I would honestly prefer this version of the first game as it captures what the original game set out to do but improves upon it with cleaner development patterns and cycles which double the games enjoyment past a onetime playthrough game but a multiple run-through game and honestly can not wait to finish the 2nd game to review as well.

Well here we are again with another game review and this is a game that is quite special to me, Dead Rising is a game that released all the way back in 2006 and was one of those games that was originally going to be a console release game for the Xbox 360 now with this in mind I did not get my Xbox 360 until December 2007 and with this I got Dead Rising a few weeks later so I was late to the party but I will always remember being excited talking about it to some of my old friends and having really good conversations with them about the gameplay itself as it was a game where I was told you can use anything as a weapon, now this is something that is a bit far-fetched especially with what the game entails but I can appreciate how much this game went around just by word of mouth as I hadn’t heard of this game until that point.

Now on with the review, well the game in itself is an Open Roam Sandbox game made by CAPCOM and this at the time was something new aside from the now action-packed resident evil series and with this game it gives the player a full open mall to explore and use any kind of household items available against the never ending undead horde and with this it doesn’t give you the 28 days later zombies where they strap their Nike’s on, no this is classic George A. Romero zombies where they shamble and are much easier to pick off with a well placed sledgehammer to the face.

You play as Photojournalist Frank West an average guy looking for the next scoop in Willamette, Colorado when there has been talks of an incident occurring there and the national guard blocking off entry and exit points. Little does frank know that the people that are attacking others are in fact the undead and he finds this out after entering the mall not long before the zombies break in.

From the off point you are given a time limit of 72 hours, now this is the time frame you have to get the story and get out using the helicopter Frank rode in on, this is used as a main frame for the story to take place as each objective has a window time for you to do the mission by but this does not mean that you wont have time to enjoy yourself by smacking zombies with a mannequin from a clothing store. The developing story is something that has some potential but unfortunately falls flat in areas but still stands as a good point in storytelling as the game is not all comedic as it sets out to be. one very good thing about this is you do not have to follow the story if you want to just smash zombies up then you can ditch the story almost entirely and carry on playing which is something really cool and with your xp progression it can be carried over into a new play-through which adds more replay-ability

Now on top of zombies you also have a plethora of bosses that come into play with their own justifications on what they do, some are just plain sick, and some are sympathetic, but all are deadly but with defeating these bosses you can gain access to saving survivors which will grant XP bonuses and open up more missions for you to do later on.

There is also a Levelling system in the game where with each level you gain more abilities that frank can use as well as attribute increases and each ability that is unlocked makes Frank a lot more equipped to deal with zombies more or less barehanded and this is nice to see from a progression perspective.

There is a quite a bit of history behind this game including its early test footage and beta builds which unfortunately are hard to find but all of this is currently being preserved by a Youtuber called Stip0 who researches the games early development and provides footage comparisons of earlier builds of the game which has also recently peaked my interest in this game again thus this review.

One area that is tons of fun but pretty much trips on itself are the achievements themselves now 50 achievements is pretty much a standard and include most of them to be done within a single play-through but one aspect of this makes the whole grinding / achievement hunting almost impossible as 2-4 of the achievements require you to play a game mode called “Infinite Mode” now playing this for the first time you would think that you would just spend time killing zombies and seeing how long you could go for or something along those lines but in all intents and purpose this is essentially survival mode where Frank would need to stock up on supplies to wait out for however time you last, the achievements associated with this is 5 Day and 7 Day Survivor which is what it wants you to achieve but does not tell you how inside infinite mode. You basically have to spend 14 Real-Time hours of surviving the hell hole that is this game mode to achieve the 7 day survivor. The other two achievements that can be associated are indoorsman and outdoorsman which require you to spend 24 hours (in-game) outside and inside the mall which sounds simple but in infinite mode it is bloody boring as you’re pretty much sat around eating food in timed intervals for two hours each aside from killing mini bosses that drop food along the way. Why these achievements got put in I will never know as they have been the most tedious thing I’ve ever had to do to get a 100% score on the game.

One thing that I have personally enjoyed is achievement runs and replays of this game in recent times as the game to me still has a lot of charm especially for an almost 20-year-old game and is something to behold as a really strong entry in a troubled IP.

I'm kinda crap at this game, it doesn't take away from the fun of it though.

Got to admit I did not think I would be writing a review for Mass Effect 1 but browsing through my library one day I saw that I had the game as well as the DLC for it now a bit of background and my own experience with this game, as far as I know there were two versions of this game when I first bought it back in 2012 for the Xbox 360 one being the “standard” version which contained no DLC and then the “Director’s Cut” I believe it was called, I bought the director’s cut as it was £2 more plus you get DLC as well as other little bits and pieces. I bought the game on what I had been told from an old friend “oh it’s a brilliant series I would recommend playing it” or something to that description. After purchasing the game, it took me 2-3 playthroughs of the introduction sequence to get into the gameplay and how the game would play out but, in the end, I completed the game and moved on to the sequel.After 6-7 years of not playing any of the Mass Effect series it has been a good time to come back to this starting off with the first.

ACTUAL REVIEW STARTS HERE

The game opens with a character customisation screen where you can create your own character from scratch with your own first name but you cannot change the second name (this might be down to the many voice lines that have already been done to fit for the name “Shepard” and also the symbolism behind the name Shepard which makes sense further down the line. I stuck with the default character and name because I’m not fussed with character customisation, I think this point of view might have been because of the Metal Gear Solid V fiasco with its ambiguous ending (another review for another time).

The game opens with you and your crew aboard the SSV Normandy flying through the vast reaches of space towards an Earth-clan planet “Eden Prime” where yourself and your crew find that its under attack with this spawns several plot points where the Commander (yourself) is brought into question by the Galaxy Council (an overarching political power that spans across the galaxies) and you then set out on you journey across the milky way coming across several characters with interesting backgrounds and several quests that question the moralities of the open space.

The overall game has been made out to be a clunky mess which in all honesty it is the way the characters move and the camera move already give the clunkiness away and if you see the sprint mechanic then it explains it, I do honestly feel that this game was an amalgamation of different mechanics that was slapped together with no clean up intended but in all honesty I love it because it works for a game introducing a world that has been built from scratch and for something trying to find its way which in its sequel seems to have been narrowed down more.

The RPG elements of the game are something that I wish were adapted into the later games but for a few different reasons I can understand why it was streamlined in 2 and 3, when you level up you are brought to a screen with various points categories (assault rifles, shotguns, pistols etc.) but it goes a bit more in depth with spending points on Paragon and Renegade categories which is your basic Good/Evil points if you want to be good spend points in this category and vice versa. These points do you make you stronger, but god does it make you work for it in the early levels.

Making conversations is the name of the game with the type of storytelling this game holds dear, making sure to know your crew is one way to proceed down a good path in this game so make sure to talk to people who are important ( yeah I know its awkward to say that but once spending a bit of time in the game you’ll be able to pick up who will advance your character and who won’t).

Sometimes the direction of where the game is wanting you to go can be confusing to read so be sure to read your journal and map to see where your points of interest are else you’ll get lost really quickly (like I did).Overall, the game is great but there is one thing that brings the game to a stuttering halt and its not the quiet moments . . .. it’s the areas where you must drive a planet rover to get to a location the way this thing controls it sucks ass. Overall a great game that I would recommend especially if you want to introduce yourself to a saga if you can put up with the clunkiness and sort of bugs that this game has then definitely play this but in all honesty one tip. . . . . SPAM AUTOSAVE FOR GODS SAKE!

8/10

Metro 2033 redux is a Remake/Remaster of the Cult classic ‘Metro 2033’ that released in 2010, this “definitive” version upgrades all of the graphics to a higher more polished state and in doing so helps the game run more smoothly on updated hardware. The game in its essence is Metro 2033 but with a lot of what Metro Last Light (2013) had to offer in terms of its streamlined gameplay mechanics.

20 Years after the bombs fell, you play as Artyom a fostered child of the metro underground in Moscow, fathered by the leader of a small settlement “exhibition”, the game starts by introducing Artyom in his room with several interactables that the player can use as well as some symbolism to further deepen Artyom’s story. The story progresses by having you walk through expositionary dialogue that introduces the world and some of its characters as well as the daily struggles of the Metro itself, this is where he meets ‘Hunter’ A Metro known badass who Artyom looks up to as a figure of intrigue, through some plot elements Hunter tasks Artyom to travel to ‘Polis’ a Ranger stronghold that is based at the other end of Moscow to send a message to the council and ask for aid Artyom does this by literally backpacking across the Metro coming across the remnants of the Soviet Union and the Fascist party.

Metro 2033 offers a lot of different mechanics that help you survive the metro and its mutated inhabitants as well as your human counterparts, your basic flashlight will need to be recharged by charging the battery, some of your weapons will need to be charged fully to get the best damage from them, you will need to watch ammo supplies as well as Air filter time especially when the game requires to go to the surface where the greater of majority or creatures remain, be careful when going up against these things as this can damage your gas mask and if you do so then you can suffocate which means looting for a new one becomes a priority really quickly.

In terms of immersion this game oozes it from its minimalistic HUD to elements where you need to keep and eye on your in-game watch that tells how much air time you have in your current filter before changing it over.

This game has varying levels of challenge when it comes to gunfights and stealth gameplay but also just overall survival can be a challenge when it comes to the many mutated enemies that will try to kill if you don’t watch your back, humans are just as much of a challenge as the AI is very refined and is a challenge to overcome if you decide to go in guns blazing, keeping an eye on your inventory as well as your Military grade bullets (a currency used in the Metro Universe) is a must if you want to survive the harsh environments as well as upgrade your weapons for later situations.

The survival element is not deep but it is not simple either it basically works with how you go about using your inventory and which weapons suit a situation more, do you save your shotgun ammo to clear out mutants in one area or use it on human enemies to clear an area more effectively if you chose the former then you need to use another weapon which can be from the Kalashnikov to handmade sturdy guns which are crude in design and practicality but get the job done for instance the B***ard Gun which when used overheats after a certain amount of firing in quick succession. When you use handmade bullets, you will have the military grade bullets to back you up in case you run out but with there being different ammo types in the game you can pretty much pick your poison with how you want go about playing this game.

When the game is close to wrapping up you pretty much have a lot of varied pieces of equipment that you pick up along the way and with this comes a lot more hardened enemies and also new enemy types that scare the ♥♥♥♥ out of you on a first try, these segments will require you to think before you act as some of these areas can mean life or death pretty quickly, one scenario is coming up against the “librarians” a Brute of a mutant that requires you to be calm and not frantically moving around at one point I had to run away from these things and defend myself but really badly which got me killed a few times but this segments was scary and fun which is pretty much this game in a nutshell.

Rating: 8.2
“why not a 9/10 or a 10 seen as you’ve praised this game all the way?”

There are some segments of the game where the AI just breaks and can get you killed this happens more in the final segments of the game but is such a few and far between thing that there is no point mentioning it properly. I would not mind going into the comparisons from the original version of this game to its new and improved version, but they are quite minimal in terms of story and a bit nit picky so I’m not going to mention them here.

After nearly 700 hours on this game I can honestly say that I have enjoyed the game and got my moneys worth from it and you should buy it if you’re into tactical first person shooters but I’m going to go into detail on what makes this game good but what also makes it trip and sometimes stumble into an absolute mess.

Rainbow six siege is not a rainbow six game as the name would lead you to believe let’s get that out of the way first, the reason I say this is because after playing some of the early rainbow six games and some of the recent ones those being Vegas 1 and 2 there is a definite change in synergy 1. There is no story to this game whatsoever, there is however a situations section that allows you to get into the controls and how different modes would work e.g. hostage rescue, Bomb and Secure Area but this is very limiting on the story and this can be completed within minutes or in an hour or 2 as I did to get into the controls and how the overall movement works in the game. 2. There is no direct reference to previous games in terms of past events or characters so no reprisal of Logan Keller or Jung Park in this unfortunately. This game is a tactical shooter with the IP of rainbow six slapped on there just to get the audience rolling back in after a 7-year absence of the series (at least that’s how it feels when I look at this game)

Now this game is tactical there is no mistaking that. Yourself and 4 others have to defend or attack a site using your wits and gadgets as well as your skills in firearms and by doing this you can win a round or lose a round, Casual Mode gives first to win 3 rounds and Ranked mode gives first to 4 unless Overtime mode is introduced which gives first to 5 and so on and so on until a team reigns victorious. Each map has its own defence sites which are different and varied which do call for different operators to be used (more information on operators below). Now there are maps that are used in casual that are not used in ranked but this does not mean just go and play ranked mode all the time as casual can be a lot of fun to practise new operators and sites with different strategies to adapt your own playstyle and this becomes especially helpful when playing ranked mode

Now the operators are where the meat of this game exist, at the time of reviewing there are 50 operators excluding the default recruit operator which has no mainline gadget to use unlike the other 50 that are available 25 for defence and 25 for attacking. Each operator has a different gadget that can be used in various ways for different situations Jackal for example is an attacking Operator who can track footprints of enemy players and this displays a ping that establishes contact every 5 seconds for a total of 5 pings, this can be done in a total of 3 times. Now this gadget can be used in a variety or different ways but mainly it used to hunt down Roamers (a type of operator who stays away from sites and flanks attacking operators unexpectedly) but it can be used to get a bead on a specific operator whereabouts especially useful when it comes to a 3v2 situation.

With this just being one operator out of the other 25 attacking ops it might be worth researching some of these up before you go into buying them outright with Renown (an in-game currency that increases with play) or R6 Credits (a purchasable currency used to purchase higher end skins and uniforms as well as Bundle packs). With the standard edition that is available now you get all the “legacy” operators but not the Year 1,2,3 or 4 operators these are bought separately dependent on the version of the game you buy.

In terms of overall enjoyment of this game I still enjoy the game after all this time playing and have improved over time when it comes to aiming in general as the weapons vary in terms of recoil patterns. I have made interesting friends along the way, but this does not mean that this game is all sunshine and rainbows this game has its fair share of toxicity especially in both Casual and Ranked modes, a lot of people making themselves sound better than they actually are, giving grief to others because they have a higher rank (similar to a class system) or even when a player is confused about what to do they will get some flak for no reason whatsoever so if you’re going to buy into this game just know that this game can be toxic and you need somewhat of a thick skin. (NOTE: everyone’s perception of toxicity differs with this game whether its in abundance or not, this is a view that I have come to realise over my time playing)

In this game there have been several updates and several fixes that have made this game brilliant but then there are some fixes that have indirectly buggered the game even further a recent one is the FPS camera, there was a fix that was meant to go towards a perspective fix and in doing so it has indirectly made animations slower when crouching which you can sometimes see in opponents kill cams. Some of the fixes that have come down have been essentially a band aid on a bigger problem a quick fix if you will.

The monetisation in this game is absolutely nuts don’t get me wrong it could be much worse (*cough EA *cough) but there are some things in this game that nearly borders it for example the massive shop they have implemented that has hundred of skins and uniforms available as well as packs, some of these can be bought with renown which is nice but some are outright bought with real money and not R6 credits the store is in no way pay to win but there are some things that would make you think this such as buying a dark uniform for a player to be used on certain maps that have dark corners (Tactical thinking there) overall I think that the store is a double edged sword its good in places but has gaping holes when it comes to its loot box system yes this game has one but one that is not bought into with real life currency or R6 credits but just with renown which can be earned in game by playing and completing challenges. The “loot box” system that’s in place can earn you a lot of new skins to start with and can earn you some sweet looking skins that you can not purchase from the store this can be included for uniforms and helmets too.

Now if you buy into this game you will get a lot of people shouting, “HOW IS THAT NOT A HEADSHOT!” and this is sometimes down to Net code and your bandwidth/Ping, and I think this is something that is still being investigated but I’m not 100% sure.

Overall, I feel that this game is great and keeps me coming back for more as I learn with every match which is something new compared to most games at the moment and it’s a blast to stream with, in terms of ratings I will probably give this game an 8.5/10