RiotControl

I'll be honest, I totally enjoyed this game when it came out. It does a lot of what today's console-centric "MMO-lite" games do, but it did it last gen.

It's a standard third-person shooter in MMO trappings, so it's not special in any way, but I thought it was pretty average at everything it did do. I definitely enjoyed it more than I ever did Destiny or The Division. The PvP was not very balanced, though. It also had a serious lack of the type of end-game content that keeps more serious players around. I couldn't say how well it did for more casual players because I dipped out soon after hitting the max level and PvPing for a bit.

This sounds... exactly like the previous three Far Cry games, complaints about the story/villains and all. The difference being that FC3 was actually fresh and exciting gameplay wise and not every game in the world had started using Ubisoft's "iconic" open world formula. Was Vaas really that memorable or was his marketing memorable? They tend to give decent introductions to villains, but then they disappear throughout the game and their story just bombs hard at the end when they show up for a face to face.

It seems like yet another sequel that piggybacks on the standard Far Cry 3 except with microtransactions. So yeah, I'd imagine a lot of the busywork in this game will have not stood the test of time in the 5 or so years since FC3, but I'd bet the general gunplay and the wacky drug-induced hijinks are alright. Hopefully with some okay comedy bits as well.

Chloe deserved a much better sendoff than what happened in Uncharted 3 and 4. I don't know why they introduced such an awesome character that people really loved in Uncharted 2 and then kind of made her a side-character afterward.

Then again... I guess Sully and Elena were also sacrificed to Nate's brother in UC4. He wasn't a good replacement IMO. I didn't actually like that game much at all if I'm being honest.

Being able to play as Chloe rectifies that in my mind. Yes, the combat and climbing has run its course in the series, but as long as they're both solid and attached to a fantastic action packed story with great characters, it didn't matter to me. That's why I didn't care for UC4 much. It sacrificed the action, had dull climbing sections and I never liked Nate's brother or the time they spend on certain story elements.

I knew something was off about the game just by the first 10 minutes. The shooting was lackluster at best with awkward default aiming sensitivity. The movement/jumping was also awkward similar to Saints Row 4. (Which mattered less because of superpowers) The weapons were boring as were the "special" moves. Why weren't the special moves just an alternate fire for the weapons to make them actually cool and the characters given more awesome abilities? The story and villain were so boring that I couldn't even remember what happened by the time I started getting my first missions from the hub base. The first three characters were also unmemorable and the humor was not landing. The graphics... still look like Saints Row 3. The upgrades... also boring. They reminded me if picking "Increase armor by 1/%2%/3% talents in Vanilla World of Warcraft.

Of course, I only played for about two hours and I'll probably re-rent the game and plow through it on some weekend to give it a fair shake. So my only real impressions are that the opening of the game is incredibly weak. That said, loot grinds have no effect on me, so it really needs to have more than that to keep me interested. (And I don't actually know what the game offers long-term)

I played a lot during the open beta and it just isn't a game that's going to hold my attention. Primarily because I don't care for the "teamplay" or game modes. It's like they intentionally picked the most boring game modes they could think of and then added their own twists which only made them worse. Most of them seem to be CTF variants of the same game type, too. I didn't care for the weird control point style mode either.

I don't think the classic arena FPS style fast-paced gameplay really lends itself to class-based teamplay either. It seems like they should have just made a UT-style game.

A nitpick, I guess, but... There are too many screen altering effects in this game. When you enter the low-grav areas, there's this awful distortion effect that takes up WAY TOO MUCH screen space around the sides. You spend far too much time in the low-grav sections of the game for that to be acceptable. Also, I believe there's heat shimmering effect in addition to some weird gradient like effect that you can especially see when looking at characters in the customization screen and character selection screen. It's all too much.

I just don't think this game is really going to take off, sadly. It doesn't help that until Quake Champions it's the first real classic style FPS hitting the market with some weight behind it and they offer no real tutorial for new players. The YouTube videos in-game are terrible. The majority of FPS players now have never played a game like Quake or UT. You really need to teach them the ropes because this game has a very high skill-ceiling.

The gameplay is great, though. That's why I pray they make some better game modes.

It might just be the more fun and laid back atmosphere of GBEast quicklooks. Kind of hard not to quickly give short, fast reactions (which in this case are negative) you're likely coming up with on the fly when the conversation and screwing around in-game really keeps you going moving fast and likely distracted.

Yeah, I'm still going to stick to ONLY ever playing the mainline Dynasty Warriors entries like the upcoming DW9 and never, ever touching their spinoffs or games based on licensed properties.

After playing through so many garbage licensed spinoffs and crossovers, I just can't be bothered to give them any more chances. This one doesn't really look any different quality wise.

If you like oldschool stealth games like say the earlier Splinter Cell games, you'll be right at home with this game.

It takes the route of not offering you "play how you want" design. It's stealth all the way, though there certainly are skills, items and such that can make you a stealth killing machine. Emphasis on the stealth.

What I liked most about the first game was the level design. It's definitely not without flaws, but the huge open levels with multi-leveled, climbable indoor buildings and basically town sized maps made for some awesome exploration. To an extent, the rigid nature of the stealth only becomes a problem when you happened to be going through a hastily designed claustrophobic portion of a level. Like say if you have no choice but to go through a set of rooms and hallways and that's the only way through... it gets a bit trial-and-error-y. Also, the high-fantasy art design is beautiful even though it's not as impressive graphically.

The real question is why is Styx so weak in Of Orcs and Men when he's clearly an unstoppable stealth killing machine in these prequels.

I just finished the game and I only did so because of my fixation of finishing games. This game is... so terrible. THE ENTIRE GAME is nothing but a massive, barren open world with outposts, endless outposts dotted around the map. Most of the outposts use the same copy/pasted buildings with the same copy/pasted generic enemies. The story missions? 99% of them just send you to an outpost to grab a file, capture an NPC or kill someone. It's no different from just going into the outpost yourself on a previous side mission or collectible you may have gone after. There's basically no story. Your squad has no characters. It's just generic military NPCs following you around that rarely talk beyond endlessly repeating acknowledgements. The "edginess" of some dialogue/situation is so cringeworthy and even gross at times. You will give up on using the drone/binoculars because it's a huge waste of your time. The amount of times you'd need to spot enemies before an attack would probably be 1,000 times. It got old after 30 times.

This post is long enough, so I'll just close this out by telling you that I was begging this game to be over many, many hours before it ended.

I kind of expected more from the start of a new trilogy of a massively successful franchise. Then again, their marketing has been really weird. I've been so uninterested in virtually every single video they've put out. It's like they intentional have picked the least interesting parts of the game to show at trade shows and I'm just not into watching their dev diaries.