Recent reviews by Sxem

2020 81 Borderlands 3 138 gig is way too big. howlongtobeat says it takes 44 hours on avg for base game + 34h for dlc, so 78h total. started on 2-24-23. finished campaign and all 4 dlc on 4-29-23 after 147 hours. minus 9 hours for farming cards and paused time while i was eating or whatever. 138 hours. wow, i really took this one slow, i guess. but i liked the campaign and dlcs a lot. i played as moze. i own most of the dlc. i kept getting fps drops and stutters and freeze ups so i took it to 720p low, but it was just reduced, but wasnt that into it. not fixed. setting my virtual memory to use the ssd c drive instead of the d drive fixed it, so i went to 720p ultra. it looks great. i probably cdve gone to 1080p, but i didnt want to push my pc too hard. ! i tried the multiplayer and it wasnt good. campaign had too much cut scene and the fights were too easy. the 2nd mode had 0 players. the 3rd mp mode i tried the host quit soon after i joined. the 4th mp mode was arms race, which i tried sp and didnt like. you start out with 0 weapons and have to scramble for weapons and find mostly crappy weapons. i kept dying fast bcs melee is a terrible way to fight. no fun. i tried mayhem 3 bcs i rolled big head mode, which seemed cool, since i have a hard time getting head shots. it just made the enemies more bullet spongey. so you need more ammo. but i already have the auto regenerate ammo perk, so it was no problem. just took longer to get kills. the enemies were also immune to incendiary, and i had a lot of incendiary in my build, so that wasnt good. you need to keep rerolling till you get a good one. i can try higher mayhems after i finish my 2nd playthru in true vault hunter mode, maybe as the operative, the one with the clone, which i plan to do in a couple years. i saved my save file just in case the steam cloud fails me. i got about half the achievements. you need to do mp to get a lot of the remaining achievements.

i tried the 3 week free trial of the multiplayer. i think i am the only person on pc using a gamepad, so i can't compete with all the keyboard mouse players. also, i do better at class based games where i can be a healer or tank. when everyone is a soldier like this, i suck. i generally got 1 kill per 3 deaths, always the worst on my team. i liked fighting the bots with infinite ammo and my choice of guns. there are some cool guns. there are plenty of game modes. i liked the ball one bcs if i carry the ball, i cant shoot, just melee, so my bad aim doesnt matter. i like how everyone is a bullet sponge. i hate shooters where you die instantly from 1-2 shots, and keep dying over and over without even knowing where the sniper or whoever is hitting you from. i love the recharging shields and the sound they make. all i have to do is avoid being hit for a few seconds and i am back to full strength. i dont like how running is like 10% faster than walking. it seems like i am speedwalking rather than running. i played titanfall 2 recently and the movement in this game is so much slower. altho the grappling hook helps a lot. and i dont like pressing my thumb stick to run. i feel like i can only press the stick so many times before it breaks, so id rather use it for functions i hardly ever use, like melee, which pressing the right stick does. also, it hurts my thumb to press the stick. it's very popular right now, peaking at almost 200,000 players every day, so wait times are low to get into games. once that 3 week free trial runs out, tho, it will probably shrink to under 10,000 players.

i played kingdom new lands first, just the first 2 islands out of 6, and liked it so much i decided to do kingdom classic first, which looks almost identical, but is a much shorter game. just 1 island instead of 6. you can finish it in like 2 hours. but 14 is the avg bcs everyone plays it over and over to learn how it works before they beat it. this game really needs an undo option. sometimes you regret building something bcs you didnt realize how late it was, and then havoc ensues. i love the retro pixel graphics and the sound effects and the coins and simple controls. its similar to tower defense and rts, but works perfectly with gamepad. i will never find an rts with good gamepad controls, so this may be the closest i can get. i played this game for 3 hours straight without hurting my thumbs too much, by using my index finger on dpad or whatever whenever i could. its a slow paced game but i like that. i beat it on day 36 on my 4th or 5th game, getting the achievement for winning in under 40 days. i may replay it to get more cheevos like beating it in under 30 or 20 days. i played it for about 10 hours before beating it the first time on 9-26-21.

2016 86 Titanfall 2, 64 gig, fps, $6 on 6-27-21, fps, 6 hours sp campaign, finished the campaign in about 6 hours in july 2021. i liked it a lot. the game looks great in 1080p high settings. i like the co-op mp more, because there are lots of pros who curb stomp me in competitive modes. mp went from 2,000 pros to 12,000 players, tho. so 10,000 must be noobs (and returning players), so i had to jump in, even tho it makes me sign into ea origin, which is annoying, having to copy paste the pw. if you dont play for a few days, it forgets yr pw and you have to copy paste it in again. steam never forgets my pw. i love class based shooters and giant mechs, and when you are out of the mech, you can double jump and wall run and grappling hook to speed around at triple the speed of any other shooter. had to turn the stick sensitivity down a little. there is no way to turn the rumble down so i may have to turn it off. i prefer half strength rumble if it rumbles a lot. there doesnt seem to be too much rumbling tho. after the tutorial, the game recommended i play on normal difficulty. it was a bit too easy on normal. but probably wdve been too hard on hard. if i do the campaign again, i'd do it on hard, also to get the cheevo. i got like 10% of the pilot helmets in the campaign, and feel no need to search every nook and cranny and do difficult precision platforming to find them all. multiplayer was too fast for me. they run circles around me and are constantly killing me from behind before i even know someone is shooting at me. or shooting me with a sniper rifle from a mile away. i liked watching the kill cam bcs i usually had no idea what just happened, so i was curious to see how i got killed. so many times, if i look at the radar map, i die and if i dont look at the radar map, i cant see where the enemy is, and i die. i was unable to get even a single kill for a long time. i'd have to play for hundreds of hours before i can be as good as the worst player in the game, and probably peak there. even on the winning team, i cant get kills, except as a titan. well, i can also kill NPCs in attrition easily. attrition is the most popular multiplayer, takes 2-3 mins to get in that type, 4-9 mins to get into the other 8 types of mp. most maps are small, and you can be killed in 1/10th of a second, which leads to lots of getting killed over and over and theres nowhere to run and hide. i prefer games where i have a lot of hitpoints and i have to be hit many times before i die. i did worst at attrition. the enemy is everywhere. its hard to learn the maps bcs i rarely see maps repeat. hardpoint i die less bcs everyone is trying to capture points, so you can just avoid those points and try to kill from far away. altho then yr team yells at you for not being on the hardpoint. i liked the mech mp the most. i still dont get many kills, but at least i die less. the monarch mech fits my playstyle the best. it starts out weakest, but if you dont die, and i am usually best at not dying with my cautious playstyle, you become the strongest. the weapons were unsatisfying tho. a weak gun, a good laser you can shoot once every 10 seconds but i mostly missed with it, and unguided dumbfire missiles, which also missed most of the time. i think you can upgrade them to guided missiles but i never lived long enough to upgrade even once. or maybe i did but didnt know how to do it. i played mostly tone bcs its the easiest noob mech, with guided missiles so you dont have to aim as much, and a beacon that lights up nearby mechs, which is good, bcs i have a hard time finding the enemy mechs in all the fog and tall buildings blocking your view. also, you have to hit them with the gun 3x to get a missile lock, and the 3 indicators when you hit someone are very useful and satisfying. i also liked legion, who is very tanky. the mechs have more personality than pilots. pilots all seem about the same, just slightly different loadouts. i prefer hero shooters, where each hero has a unique playstyle. i tried all 9 mp types. i sucked but did improve some, finally getting some kills. but then i gave up and uninstalled. i didnt like how toxic the players were, with lots of insults like '♥♥♥♥♥♥' in the text chat. at least there's no voice chat that i'd have to mute. well, it has a mp voice volume, which i set to 3-4 out of 10, but i never heard it. waiting for mp for 5-10 mins each game is annoying. the time remaining counter is all over the place. the number constantly jumps around, seeming random. so many times itll say 3 2 1 second left, then starting game, then back to 4 mins. are people quitting at the last second? anyway, i am too slow with my gamepad to compete with mp this fast paced. i shdve played this game during the free weekend. then i wdve known not to drop $6 on it. played it for 18 hours total, 6 hours sp and 12 hours mp. if it was under 10 gig, i'd keep it around longer, but a 64 gig game is too big to keep unless it's really great. it had dropped from peaking at 12,000 players to 2,500 within a few weeks, anyway, and was usually around 2,000 or less players, probably all pros, when i played. i might come back to it if it goes free to play, and suddenly is full of many thousands of noobs...

2014 84 Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor GOTY edition, 53.6g, 26 hours, played 54 hours and loved it. action-adventure with stealth, kind of like batman or assassins creed, but in mordor. had to play it in november 2020 bcs they are going to remove all online features by the end of the year. the nemesis forge, vendetta missions, leaderboards, some achievements, and WBPlay connections will all be unavailable. next play middle earth shadow of war, bcs they are removing the ability to use the forge to have allies and enemies from the first game in the 2nd game. so i may have to also finish the 2nd game by the end of the year. on second thought, i dont care about the nemesis forge. Vendetta missions are being discontinued but i did get Repaid in Blood - Complete a Vendetta Mission. i avenged my friend gould. You need to qualify for the elite leaderboards for some, which will no longer exist. i have no chance of getting this. Lord of the Ring - Complete all objectives in the Test of The Ring. kill 5 War Chiefs and 12 Captains. To earn the "Lord of the Ring" achievement you must also complete all 3 optional objectives:1. Have 8 branded War Chiefs or Captains 2. Brand 50 grunts 3. Finish in under 60 minutes. The Hunt is my Mistress - Complete all objectives in the Test of the Wild. Kill 5 Beastmaster War-chiefs and 20 Captains (in other words, kill all leaders and do it without dying) Kill 10 Captains with Monsters Attain 13,000 points Complete in 40 minutes. these are impossible for me. i can always use SAM if i want... but probably wont. the game looks great in 1080p in almost maxxed settings but fps limited to 60. overall, the combat is too easy, but looks so impressive, i dont mind. i do mind that you cant store health pickups. so if youre low on health, you have to hope one is nearby. id rather pick it up as i see it and use it as i need it. im usually not a completionist, but this game tempts me to 100% it... in the end, i decided to just do the main quest, finished the bow challenge and all the hunting and survival challenges, almost got all the ithildin and found all the objects, and did maybe 2/3 of the rest of the optional side missions. saved almost all the slaves. the side missions were too repetitive, so i didnt finish them. also, the reward for finishing the bow, sword, or dagger missions is a special move where you have to press down on both sticks, which i dont like to do, it hurts my thumbs and might break the sticks. the final battle was too easy, just a few quicktime event key presses. shdve been the most difficult battle of the game, or at least as hard as any of the other captains i beat. i did 14/24 outcast rescue 6/10 sword legends, 10/10 bow legends, 4/10 dagger legends, 10/10 survival challenges, 8/10 hunting challenges, 30/32 ithildin, 36/42 artifacts. it took 36 hours to finish the main campaign, 35/74 achievements, got all abilities except dispatch, the final one. got all attributes except the final 3. save says i am 83% finished. got 49 of 74 achievements, which is 66%. im tempted to get a few more cheevos. did test of the wild and the bright lord campaign and test of the ring but did not try to finish fast and do all that stuff for extra cheevos that wdve made it less fun and did not continue with the dlc after finishing each one. one mechanic i didnt like was that captains get stronger when they beat you, so beating them gets harder. so every time you fail that mission, that mission gets harder to finish. didnt bother to do trials of war. it was just killing captains and warchiefs within a time limit or without dying, to get on an elite leaderboard which is about to be deleted in a week or 2, which seemed boring. kept failing the side missions to make one ring mode last longer in the bright lord campaign, but finishing just 1 seemed like enough to beat the dlc by killing sauron and a bunch of warchiefs at once. definitely a better ending than the main campaign, altho i only died once due to stupidly trying to pick up a rune without looking around first, so it may have been too easy. i left a lot of runes behind in that level by killing many captains bcs theres no time to pick them up due to being constantly swarmed and the game ends as soon as sauron dies.

played for 10-20 mins to finish first quest. looks good, even tho it wd only let me play in 720p. kbm controls are terrible. have to click every time you fire an arrow or swing a weapon or move, which is constantly. itd wreck the mouse. also moving enemies are hard to click, so you stand there doing nothing or accidentally running toward the enemy a lot while they run at you. then you accidentally click the ground near an enemy after they die, and run right at the enemy yet again, which is bad when you are trying to fight from a distance with a bow or magic, as i was. killing the boss monster was annoying. had to shoot, move, shoot, move many many times, and still moved too slowly and got hit a lot and had to use a lot of potions. i doubt id get good at these controls. it was still easy so far on normal difficulty. also managing inventory was annoying. quickly ran out of space. need a bag of holding so you dont have to spend most of your time running back and forth to pick things up and then sell them. pressing a is supposed to make you pick up everything around you, but it did nothing. had to manually click each thing. this game seems like no fun but it did get good ratings, so maybe i will try it again someday.

i really want to play this game, but cant get unstretched widescreen. i was hoping maybe there'd be a mod for a later game like dawn of war 2 that recreates this game, like playing morrowind with a skyrim mod, but it never happened. i will probably play it in stretched widescreen, eventually, tho, since i love dawn of war games so much.

not much of a graphics upgrade with this 2013 remake. still looks very 2004. text is too small even tho i set it to 'huge'. sound is not good. lots of text reading with no voices. not very clear what i shd be doing. i just did the tutorial and was very bored and unimpressed. it has text only missions, which i'm sure will suck. ai seems very dumb. 3d land based rts missions seem like the best part, yet they are optional. but you can do that men of war thing where you take over a unit if you want, which i like. space combat is just simple 2d. your equipment breaks down so you have to do a lot of busy work constantly replacing and repairing stuff. seems like most of the mini games are crap. this does not seem like a game i wd like. i regret buying it for the very high price of $7. shdve waited to get it for 33 cents in tier 1 of a bundle.

finished it, liked it. gamepad controls sucked tho. made it much harder than it should have been. but i hate keyboard mouse controls.

i used the 227i patch for widescreen but the gamepad wont work. cant look up or down. need to create an xpadder profile. but the game only worked the first few times and then stopped working even after reboot. nothing happens when you try to play it but if you click it again it says its already running. error 6748. probably not worth trying to play it again. i'd probably have to spend many hours troubleshooting to get it to work in windows 10.