Recent reviews by GaslightOps

Great sequel off the back of Far Cry 3. Lots of improvements. Love the grappling hook, love the setting, love Rabi Ray Rana. The signature guns are more interesting and gunplay is improved. Side activities are more fun and extended. Only complaints about this one are the characters, including Pagan Min which I know is unpopular, and story which are meh in my opinion and the choice of only having the peaks available in certain missions. I feel the characters in this one are a step down compared to Far Cry 3 as they are just not as interesting / likeable or just too over the top / tryhard feeling when it comes to Pagan Min (similar to Deadpool or Lucifer).

Never played this game when it first came out so this isn't nostalgia talking. This game holds up well. The graphics are pretty decent with some help from reshade and the gameplay is classic late 2000s / early 2010s FPS in an open world. Gunplay felt satisfying, especially in the first half since the pirates don't take too many shots to take down. Loved the characters, with Vaas stealing the show of course. Second half did get a little rocky as the baddies start to get tankier and the story bogs down a bit (honestly just remove Hoyt completely and extend Vaas' part a bit more and that would fix most of my issues), although the endings are still great.

I just couldn't get into this. I know I know, Kratos has matured now, but I guess I haven't because I still want GoW 3 Kratos and gameplay! The change in Kratos' character, the change in scenery, the change in gameplay are all just too much for me. All those changes would be fine but I just didn't enjoy them for what they were either. Having Kratos be almost mute was boring, his relationship with his son didn't do anything for me and if anything just cheapened the original story, the camera felt claustrophobic and the combat was slow and plodding. I know some people swear by this game but it's just not for me.

Super fun game. The builds are very flexible so it's rare to get pigeonholed into a build with no synergies. Still needs a bit more balance but really promising stuff. I would agree with most reviewers that even though it's early access it is very functional and plays smoothly. Almost feels complete to me.

Just like Grandad used to play back in the day!

Just like the originals with more challenges. Kinda bummed about the blood being removed though as it added a little bit of gritty edge to the game.

Wow, just a spectacular piece of art. This game is what the future of "choose your own adventure" games looks like. All the characters were like-able, or hate-able when necessary, the graphics and animation are amazing, the story was very moving at multiple points as the plots develop. Very reminiscent of Stephen Spielberg's AI movie when it tugs on the heartstrings.

This game has very few flaws for its genre. My biggest complaint, which is a bit of a double-edged sword, is that since the dialogue interactions are meant to be real-time, they aren't elaborated on when you pick an option (e.g. Hank asks "How do you feel about this?", options are "Reasonable", "Frustrated", "Pragmatic", "Resentful").

On one hand, this is kind of how it has to be done to make the player feel like the interaction is taking place as if they were really there. Allowing the player to see full sentence responses would mean slowing the pace down substantially, which could really hurt the sense of immersion and tension in this game. There is a timer that counts down before your character goes with a default option, which might be no reaction at all. This works pretty well in most cases and the options are unique enough that you can kind of tell the reaction that you will convey.

However, there are times where I was completely blindsided by my character's reaction (e.g. I get asked "Do you feel bad about killing innocent people?", I choose "No Doubt", expecting my character to say something along the lines of "No doubt I feel bad about that. How could anyone not feel bad about that?" and instead my character says "I have no doubt that I made the right decision to kill those innocents. I'd do it again if I had to"). I did end up replaying a chapter maybe 3 or 4 times throughout the story because of that issue.

On a related note, there is no save scumming in this game which I appreciated. You have to play up to a checkpoint, which can be 10+ minutes apart in some chapters. If you backtrack to make a different choice by restarting from a checkpoint or chapter beginning, all subsequent choices that you originally made are erased for that playthrough. This was a great system that encouraged me to see how my decisions played out instead of trying to cheat my way to a particular ending. As I mentioned above, I did end up "cheating" by replaying a few chapters where I felt I had only picked an undesirable choice out of confusion or by accident, but this system generally felt fair to me and encouraged me to stick with my decisions even when their outcome was less desirable.

The driving physics are spectacular, the graphics are okay (great during racing, bad in cut-scenes pre and post race), and the bugs are awful. Got the constantly disappearing track bug at least once every time I played. This game also manages to corrupt my graphics driver after playing, which I've never had a game do in my 25 years of gaming. After playing I'd get rainbow artifacts on my screen, even in other programs, until reinstalling my graphics driver. Had to uninstall as I got tired of doing that.

Update:
After a year of playing, this game isn't in a much different state than launch. The devs seem to focus on adding new cars and maps, but I literally can't get the game to launch half the time now.

This game is not a great full-on RPG, due to the dialogue system and NPC interactions, but it is a great RPG-lite / adventure game.

Pros
- Gunplay feels really good compared to the Bethesda Fallout entries that came before it
- Characters are memorable and the companions are varied
- There is a use for pretty much every item in the game thanks to the settlements and crafting
- Decent progression. You do get power armor early on, but you have to have the materials to power and repair it which evens things out a bit.
- Interesting locations

Cons
- Dialogue system won't show you full options (fixable with mods). The tone that the lines are delivered in and the reaction from NPCs can go against player intentions (e.g. You are playing an evil character and pick an option for "I guess I'll have to kill you then", but the line is delivered as a joke and the NPC interprets it as such)
- Not a lot of reactivity other than around direct plot points. Typical Bethesda issue where I can be the head of the Institute, but there is no mention of it from key NPCs that should be aware of that.
- Not a lot of companion options for an evil play through

Gets old fast. The bullet time is fun, but it wears out its welcome after the first few levels. This game is just a slog even though it's only supposed to be like 8-16 hours long. Thought I was almost done at 7 hours, as the story felt like it was wrapping up, only to watch a speedrun on Youtube to see I was only halfway through the game. The mechanics basically feel like a less restrictive version of Time Crisis in third-person with bullet time, so if that sounds great to you maybe you'll love it. Didn't really like the weird effects in the cutscenes either. I assume it was supposed to represent the effects of the pain killers, but it was just annoying more than anything.