Recent reviews by doppel

I have been a fan of the Witcher Series since the first video-game. I have already beaten them all years ago, but I had a desire to play this title again and waited until the free next-gen update was released. This led me to realize that I never reviewed this game, so here we are.

I have watched the first few seasons of the show, and dabbled into the books, but I am mainly a fan of the game series. The 3rd one definitely feels like CDPR's magnum opus at this point, especially with the mixed success of Cyberpunk. There is a reason that Witcher 3 is the gold standard for open-world action RPGs, and it is definitely my favorite in the series and action RPG to date.

Also worth noting, this game does show more breasts than most AAA titles, and unlike Assassin's Creed or Fable, the screen does not just fade to black if you pursue the sex with a character. These scenes show butts and boobs, and are avoidable and skippable if that's not your thing, but there will be visible boobs regardless of your choices. The game is also a little bit higher on the gore side, as you are chopping monsters with a sword, and some of the monsters are a bit grotesque, i.e. wraiths are missing their bottom jaw with a long dangling tongue.

The graphics were breathtaking when the game released, but is now a bit more dated with games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey surpassing them, however the next-gen update has breathed some life back into them, most of which the average gamer doesn't have powerful enough hardware to fully take advantage of yet since it's highly dependent on Ray Tracing.

I also suffered from various bugs in the next-gen release, but they are addressing them overtime. It's a sad trend for CDPR, since they're an independent studio that grew so fast by going above and beyond. I hope they sort themselves out soon. The GOTY edition was relatively low in bugs my first playthrough, but no game is as rock solid as old console games were, but those games also weren't as complex.

The mechanics are much improved from the previous games in the series, and while some people still complain about them, I think they're fine. I do prefer this type of game with a controller. It is an RPG, with skills to unlock upon leveling, and several different playstyles available, although they're not as in-your-face as a class system. While there are annoyingly lengthy tutorials, it doesn't do a great job of explaining skills early on, and the player really needs to uncover what their preferred playstyle is by just playing and seeing what they tend to lean on. The skills don't start feeling impactful until you've leveled a few times, and then by late game you've already unlocked everything you want and leveling adds no value. There is a more advanced resistance and weakness component to mobs in the game, based on lore and the character's Bestiary that can mostly be ignored in easier difficulties but becomes crucial in harder difficulties.

In typical open-world looting fashion, inventory space will be a challenge, solved by leaving items behind or trudging while encumbered to merchants with limited coin pools or dismantling at a blacksmith. Signs act as waypoints for fast traveling and when I played you could ride your horse while encumbered, but I believe a later patch made it so you cannot.

The world is magical, both figuratively and literally, based on Polish/Slavic and European/Germanic folklore, in which the player is thrown into the middle of it, in medias res style. You control Geralt (voiced by Doug Cockle), probably in the later years of his life, and he is his own unique character with his own quirks, faults and strengths. Even though the player is able to make choices that affect the story, Geralt has his own biases which are apparent. He also has pre-existing relationships, which the player uncovers through interactions with those characters. One thing that I appreciate about Geralt, is that he is a bit rough around the edges, rugged, and not overly attractive (although looks are subjective).

While 3 has a drastic improvement in mechanics and openness from it's previous titles, a noticeable improvement from the insanely improved graphics of the 2nd title, I do feel like the amount of choices, impacts, and factions has declined in each title. I hope CDPR improves on this in future titles, along with the limited crafting system, and the limited character customization.

If you have played the previous titles, there is a continuation to some character building and there's an opportunity a little ways in to update the game with some of the more crucial choices you made in the second, but playing the previous titles is not necessary, and even if you do, there's still a lot of things unanswered about Geralt and this world, especially because in the first two titles the character has amnesia, which he has apparently recovered from when the 3rd picks up. Which is perhaps another complaint, is that things have happened to our protagonist between titles that not only contradict some of the things Geralt has said in the previous title, but that impact the character and the story out of the player's control and knowledge. You piece these things together as you play, so it's doubly confusing for returning players. There also is no Iorveth... like, at all.

The last thing worth mentioning is the mini-game, Gwent, that was so popular that they made a standalone version of it and a separate story for it. I typically dislike mini-games but even I ended up trying to complete all of these challenges in the game. It is a card game similar to Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh! I didn't try to collect all of the cards, but as far as I could tell, you cannot collect enough cards to even use every deck, and there's a decent amount of RNG that is annoying since some story paths are locked behind winning (or losing) a game. I never did end up playing the standalone game though, because I can't imagine trying to defeat real humans with stacked decks in this card game, as it can be pretty one-sided.

It's been 5 years since I've played this game, and it had been out for years when I did finally get to it. Even though it was dated at that point, I still put in over 100 hours.

This is the best Fallout game, and the only one made by Obsidian (although the founders did work on 2), who would later go on to make the spiritual successor to this game, Outer Worlds. Fallout 1-2 were very different mechanically than the games made since Bethesda owned the IP. Fallout New Vegas is post-apocalyptic Skyrim, with all of the Bethesda bugs and charm. The story is decent enough to propel you into action without locking you in, since it is open-world, there is a lot of exploring and passive world building. The entire Fallout Series has this captivating and fascinating world that they never fully unfold for you, but all of the elements are right there, just out of grasp.

In the Fallout world, as told by Bethesda, the US is struck by nuclear bombs in the 50s, resulting in heavy radiation, large deserts, abandoned and destroyed cities, and mutations. The 50s retrofuturism is such a beautiful and haunting contrast to a post-apocalyptic future that I just love. Artistically there are just some fantastic elements, i.e. Pip Boy, Nuka-Cola, Power Armor, The New California Republic (NCR), etc.

At first glance, this loot-heavy open-world with these great high-level concepts, story elements, and tongue-and-cheek commentary feels awe-inspiring, but in the end the game falls a little flat with a mostly barren landscape, and copious amounts of loot with no value or use. There are different factions and reactions to your choices, that aren't overly impactful, and odds are you will find yourself using the same gear and weapons throughout most of the game, while struggling to decide if you want to rank up things like lock-picking, hacking, and conversational skills or investing in much needed combat skills. Some may call that balanced, but for a single-player game, balanced against what?

Another thing to be aware of, is that while the more recent Fallout games appear to be a First-Person Shooter, they are an RPG first, which means that your character has skill-checks and accuracy outside of your own. This becomes very apparent when you accurately target a mob but your shot wildly misses.

I am highly critical of this game, because I did love it so much. If you were to play any Fallout game, it should be this one. My advice is to worry less about what is "best" and just do what feels fun in the moment. I don't believe there is a best path forward or best build, and I found it boring when I worried too much about sticking to the main story or doing the right thing. My favorite playthrough I basically made The Widow from Into the Badlands and meleed my way through most of the content.

I hope Fallout 5 allows the player to better customize the items they actually use, maybe unlocking styles like in DCUO or WoW, has more faction building based on interactions and choices, maybe like in the original Witcher game, as well as perhaps combining more of the United States from the previous games.

Tl;dr - this is the best Fallout game and is a classic entry into the open-world action RPG genre that is memorable and worth playing, while leaving the player wanting for me.

This game has a lot of potential and is definitely underrated. They did a lot of things right that OverWatch did not, but in typical Hi-Rez fashion, it feels like it's lacking that AAA polish due to a perceived lack of effort. They have some very unique characters, and it definitely feels more like a MOBAFPS from an objective standpoint. When you first start playing the visuals, movement, and aiming feels kind of cheap or dated, but I found it more raw which I ended up appreciating. Sometimes it feels like games try to implement all sorts of mechanisms to make it harder to aim or introduce some RNG into the mechanics that as a highly mechanical player I just find annoying.

Like OW and any MOBA, they are constantly adjusting and rebalancing characters. This also means that there are going to be a lot of opinions on what needs to be balanced, and I definitely don't agree with all of them. I ultimately quit playing for two reasons:

1. They kept nerfing my favorite character, who also has a skill-set unlike any other character in any other game which was what kept drawing me back to it.

2. In typically MMO and MOBA fashion, the community in ranked is toxic. In casual games, most people won't interact with you at all, which is nice and makes it more chill. However, after stomping on players and bots repeatedly, if you want to have a more challenging experience, if you don't have hundred thousands of hours recorded and your characters aren't level 100+, players will immediately ♥♥♥♥ talk you before even seeing what you can do... which was a shame because as an ex-competitive player of multiple FPS, I probably don't need the same amount of time to compete as they did.

Some noticeable differences to OW are that each character has cards that you can assign to them, and add points to, as well as three skills to choose from that creates some diversity to the character. However, you can only choose those at the beginning of the map, and in true MOBA fashion, you can only choose your character in the initial lobby. There is still a rock-paper-scissor balance to the characters, but you're stuck making the best of your choice unlike in OW where you can just switch infinitely to try to counter different characters and metas. There are also items to buy during the match, like a MOBA, which means that feeding definitely can be more impactful. It also means that you can counter some of the other characters by purchasing things that make it harder to heal, reduce certain types of damage, let you see stealthers, etc.

There are no off-tanks, it's 5v5, and I believe OW2 has copied this from Paladins. All classes are fun in this game, my second favorite character to play is support who can do powerful healing and damage. I feel like they balanced shields and ability timers with skill shots well for the most part.

Another interesting choice to this game is that when people leave they are played by bots. The bots aren't particularly good and so I can't say it's better or worse than playing down a person, I think it inherently has both pros and cons. Being able to backfill would probably be better overall though.

Tl;dr - This game is fun enough that I gave it a thumbs up, but you're not missing out if you don't play.

Survival sandbox based on Viking lore. I'm not typically a sandbox or survival game player, the last one I really played was Terraria, but this one is pretty fun. It's not perfect, and it's not done, and they take a long time for significant updates, but it's still worth hundreds of hours even if they never finish it. The wife and I have been playing off and on since the day it went on Early Access and I can say it's definitely one of the better games out right now. The world is beautiful enough, I just wish they'd upgrade the player models.

Look, was the pre-order Bonus Pack worth it? No not really, but I don't have a problem supporting a new developer.

What I like:

1. Enjoyable graphics and art style
   
2. Interesting world
   
3. Third-person action-adventure

What I don't like:

1. Rough / lazy storytelling
   
2. Controls (see below)
   
3. Rough hit boxes / area of attack
   
4. Camera is a little unintuitive, can't zoom in or out
   
5. Not great at explaining mechanics, stats, how things work, or even what all the icons are
   
6. Not really open-world... it's kind of confusing what you can and can't climb on and you feel a bit boxed in like older games
   
7. Get locked in place too much when character is talking or picking things up
   
8. Annoying that all monsters respawn when you die, but I could potentially see needing to farm if you get stuck on a boss

Control issues:

1. It recommends to use a controller but it's just not responsive enough
   
2. MKB is more responsive, but you can't remap any of the keys

Conclusion:
I want to like this game, I want to support a new studio, and I don't want to ♥♥♥♥ on someone's work, however, it's hard to recommend this game right now. If they work on the controls it might be enough to thumbs up this game, but it's not GotY and probably not worth full-price (I pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition).

There is so much to like about this game. The art and music are stunning, the story is both familiar and new, and it's a unique twist on an established genre. I could confidently say that Hades is up there for the top roguelike game, although I'd never say it's the best game of all time.

In the end, this game results in button mashing and RNG, which was fun for a moment. However, the pacing for unlocking things in general, but especially the main story, is just too slow.

Here's what to know if you're going to get into this game... You're going to die, a lot. It's actually a part of the story. And the game doesn't just tell you the story, you have to uncover it by making these attempts and talking with the various NPCs.

The other thing is that you need to collect different items/currency from each of your runs, a lot of them, but you're not guaranteed to get all of them every time. What makes matters worse, is that most items you can only turn in one at a time per run and the NPC you turn it into will not always be available. Add in a barrier that some NPCs need to be interacted with X amount of times before accepting items, it makes unlocking stuff really tedious.

This game is definitely worth a go, but I'm not sure if I'll ever "beat" it.

Update:
So I found myself repeatedly going back to this game until I did beat the entire story (still haven't completed all the unlocks). I probably didn't go about it the fastest way, in hindsight, but I also wouldn't have really known how to progress the story appropriately without looking it up. I still feel like the game is a little bit too grindy for the sake of grinding, but overall one of my favorite games and still my favorite game in the genre. I will be pre-ordering the 2nd game they just announced.

One of my favorite games (I thought I had already reviewed it). It's a FPS, it's campy, and has an 80s feel. The story and acting is good enough, the combat and controls are solid (for a single player game). I'm also grateful that it's not overly long, as I struggle with too long of single-player games (I mostly play MMOFPS). I mostly used the bow and melee, so ammo was almost never a problem. Lastly, it goes on sale quite frequently, so you can likely pick it up under $5.

I have over 600 hours on Origin at the time of writing this review, and like many, transitioned to Steam as soon as it was available there. This is hands down the best BR to date. It's fast paced with moderate Time-To-Kill (TTK). It uses the Source engine, so it's real familiar for old school Source gamers, like myself. There is travel time, spray patterns and bullet drop for weapons, no fall damage, reduced air strafing / bhoping. The main mode is trios (casual and ranked), there's casual duos, and sometimes a special mode. No singles.

It's set in the world of Titanfall but no mechs, no wall running, and a very loose association story wise... let's face it, there really is no story. Although, they are attempting to add more all the time. I don't actually play for the story, though.

Pros
- Free
- Mostly balanced (characters and weapons)
- Active dev team
- Abilities aren't overpowered (think less OW and more Quake Champions)
- Source engine (if you're used to it)
- Decent, although not great, "free" cosmetics (crate / craft system)
- You can earn currency to unlock all characters just by playing
- Battle Pass has free and paid track
- Battle Pass is $9 and you can earn enough coins if you level it up to infinitely buy the next pass
- Zero chance of P2W (purchases are purely cosmetic)
- Cross platform (only if you group with a console player)

Cons
- Hardware intensive (as of this review)
- Servers aren't the most reliable
- In-game voice is often too low
- Source engine (dated)
- Lots of junk / throwaway skins, very little genuine content (gets better with time)
- Crafting is "expensive" on materials (although better with BP drops)
- Hitboxes vary drastically by model / character
- Controller aim assist is a bit strong (PC and console)
- Top 100, Master, Diamond and Plat all play in the same ranked lobby, so massive learning curve if you can make it through Gold (this could probably be remedied with a tiered point system, similar to other games)

You get the Season Pass unlocks (Viktor skin, mount, etc) and 1500 crystal, and that is all you get. I tried researching this repeatedly before buying, not thinking about it having it's own Steam page, and couldn't find an answer. The description is purposefully worded in a way that makes you think you are getting Battle Pass content (potentially from multiple years). You are not. You have the ability to get all of that Battle Pass content for the active Battle Pass with the crystals they give you with this purchase. 2019 + 2020 are just the years they're attempting to scam you with this deal, it otherwise has no affiliation to anything. Luckily, I bought it for 50% off, so I only wasted $20 instead of $40, which is insane.

It's $25 normally for the 1500 crystals, so if that is your goal, getting it for $20 is probably worth it.

I don't know about new characters or unlocking abilities because I already paid for the character pack which also grants me that, on top of unlocking EVERY character in the game. If you care about the characters, just pay $10 for that. I can tell you that whatever exclusive skin, emote and pose I was supposed to get per new character was not retroactive, meaning I received none.

Overall, it's pretty disappointing because I have given them money for various packs and deals of the day. So yes, shame on me for not reading more carefully and for not better understanding their unique jargon that I had no way to previously understand. Their support purposefully doesn't give you direct answers about anything either (I've reached out to them more than just this one instance). I'm actually so annoyed by this that I have already uninstalled the game -- I'm done, GG.