Recent reviews by Salamand3r-

Four hours in, and it's been great so far. Obviously that could change, but things are looking good.

• NOT an open world - yes, this is a pro. In 9/10 cases, full open worlds just add grind that pulls you away from the story
  
• Stellar graphics and performance (first UE5 game to run decently, from Obsidian of all people)
  
• Solid voice acting
  
• Very good combat loop - magic, melee, and range all feel great in both 3rd and 1st person
  
• Great fantasy art style.

• Not an open world - yes, it's a con too. Will hamper long-term replayability.
  
• Long shader compilation and still compilation stutters ingame
  
• Poor character animations, especially facial animations. About Bethesda tier.
  
• 3rd person camera isn't customizable enough
  
• Not very good audio mastering. Lots of varied volume levels for both VAs and foley. Can't tell what its using for positional audio, but it's not good.

So far, definite thumbs-up. The first two Pillars games were spiritual successors to the old Black Isle games (BG 1/2, IWD) before BG3 came along. I find that Avowed more closely captures the feelings of wonder and immersion that I got from those old games when I first played them (damn, almost 30 years ago now...). For that alone, definite buy from me.

PS - I hated Outer Worlds. I'm not just here fluffing Obsidian.

Technical notes - this uses UE5 Lumen. That means it always is running RT, albeit in software. The RT checkbox in graphics options uses hardware RT instead of software. This should mean more performance, but since it also increases RT quality massively (and you can't control this) despite being hardware accelerated it can run worse on some systems. Would be nice to have the option to use hardware at lower quality settings.

DLSS and Framegen dlls can be swapped to newer versions for improved image quality. They don't seem to impact performance at all. Both options work well - although some may still find LSFG to offer better framegen quality and performance depending on their hardware.

HDR is decent. Not a great implementation, but on par with Cyberpunk and HZD.

Next Gen update after well over a year of work includes...some content that was made by modders, not Bethesda.

Zero real bugfixes, no actual UW support, PhysX still broken despite nVidia publicly stating how Beth can fix it, physics still tied to framerate, HD texture pack is still trash.

Modders have done more useful fixes to FO4 in the last week than Bethesda managed to do with years of work. Many of which are temporarily broken by the update.

This is absolutely unacceptable - better to have not wasted everyone's time than release a quarter-assed update with literally no working fixes and some free modder-made content.

I'm not a typical Bethesda hater - they've done some great games and do have some actual talented content artists. However they really need to take advantage of the resources that come from being part of Microsoft and owning technical powerhouses like id - there is no reason the game could not have been put into a significantly more modern state for this so-called "Next gen" update.

Excellent little tool.

The new framegen is great for stuff like older Bethesda games where exceeding 60 FPS can cause issues (yes, even with fix mods).

Highly recommended for tinkerer.

Preliminary review -

If you're a Bethesda RPG fan, you can stop reading. You're going to buy this no matter what, reading anything negative is just going to spike your blood pressure. Stay healthy.

I sit here after 1.5hr of playtime, having needed to research and install both mods and patches just to get the game to NOT look like it has a built-in 2010-era ENB slapped on top.

Basically, it's a Bethesda RPG, in every meaningful way. Tons of random objects to loot, lots of little storytelling vignettes, weird take on leveling and skills, janky but passable combat, and bugs.

Visually, out-of-the-box it's horrendous. Lack of HDR (fixable with Special K), incredibly ugly LUTs (can be modded), and the UI animations locked at 30 FPS making space combat a stuttery and distracting mess (also can be modded).

Performance-wise - it's pretty well documented that it runs like garbage. Luckily the modding community has already identified some of the issues (the executable was compiled wrong, hence it's 90mb size). nVidia users have a mod for DLSS that helps tremendously.

Story - I'm 1.5hr in. Can't really speak on that. At least the protagonist isn't voiced.

It's not as buggy as Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind, etc were at launch. It's better behaved than CP2077 was at launch.

But the oversights are baffling and glaring. We've all heard about the missing FOV slider and always-defaulted-to-on upscaling.

It plays OK. If you want a new Bethesda RPG - you're going to buy it eventually, and you know what you're buying. If you just want a new space adventure game, wait a year or two for some patches, sales, and mods.

So far, it's nothing special and it's fundamentally at least partly broken.

I'll update the review at 20 hours and at 40 hours, and probably once more if/when I hit 100 hours.

Edit: Wait....an unironic cover of Rocket Man in the live action trailer? Does Bethesda actually have internet access, or are they just that clueless about how much of a meme that song has been since Family Guy reminded everyone that the Shatner version exists?

Compared to the last two games in the Shadow Warrior reboot series, this is a bit of a mixed bag.

It continues the evolution of the shooting mechanics and feel - Doom Eternal borrowed some of its feel from SW2, and SW3 returns the favor and borrows a lot from Doom Eternal. An excellent progression from Shadow Warrior 2 in terms of handling and controls, everything is intuitive, and unusually for a game built on UE, it feels extremely snappy to play.

The feel and handling is good enough that I was able to start out at the highest difficulty and feel like I had the control I needed to survive, and deaths were my own fault.

As I said, this is unusual for a UE game - even the best examples of shooters built on UE (Amid Evil is top-tier example) still have a slushy, sloppy feel to them. Shadow Warrior 3 plays almost as well as an idTech shooter.

The voice actor change for Lo Wang is a non-issue. Neither is memorable or distinct. If it makes a few people happy that the role is no longer whitewashed, fine. It would be debatable if the previous actor brought something interesting and unique to the role, but that wasn't the case.

Graphically, the game is spectacular. Thanks to DLSS being available, the performance is excellent on nVidia cards. The game lacks HDR support, which is almost inexcusable for a 2022 release. Although, that's probably better than the abominable HDR implementation in Shadow Warrior 2.

I've only put a bit over an hour in, but based on story progress, I'm going to anticipate that the complaints about the length of the game are on point.

I don't miss the looter-shooter aspect of the previous game. I don't miss the hub-based pseudo open-world. The linear arena format lifted right from Doom Eternal works extremely well here, and many of the enemy gimmicks are fun to learn and play around.

All in all, if this were a full $60 new release? Hell no. It's worth the $40 launch if you're the kind of person who pays launch prices. I'd say that anywhere in the $10-$25 range, it's a solid buy for any modern/retro hybrid shooter fan.

Overall, 6/10. Above average, saved in large part by excellent responsiveness and gorgeous graphics. Not a ton of substance, but still worth it at a reduced price.

It also says a lot about my thoughts of 2022 game releases that I nominated this game - a solidly mediocre 6/10 game - for GOTY.

An excellent classic - I remember many hours spent playing this as a much younger man after finding the demo on the Duke3D CDROM.

But, back then I also didn't have a joystick. Or when I did, there were always issues with game ports and IRQs and extended memory and whatnot typical of DOS gaming back in the day.

Basically, I've been waiting ~25 years to play it maxed out and properly with a joystick.

Steam release has some issues though - instead of using the actual Doxbox joystick emulation, they just bound axes to keyboard keys meaning that you effectively had a digital joystick instead of an analog one.

Looks like they couldn't figure out how to properly change a single variable in the conf regarding joysticks and gave up.

Once you fix that and get rid of their ridiculous binds, it plays like it should and it's an absolute blast from the past.

Highly recommended if you're willing to spend a few minutes fixing the configuration to enjoy it at it's best.

Kickin' soundtrack too. One of the absolute best of the era.

Has issues, needs mods for stability. Clearly rushed, and poorly supported by Bethesda after launch (they were responsible for long-term support, not Obsidian).

Still the best modern Fallout game.

And further, as a platform for other mods, it's one of the all-time greats thanks to an incredible community of dedicated and talented modders.

If you haven't ever played it, do so.

In the current state, I cannot recommend this game.

With some significant graphical glitches still present, some inconsistent performance issues, the inability to fully rebind keys (completely sidelining ESDF or other non-standard keyboard users), a questionable HDR implementation, and a lot of toher technical issues it appears that, even with a massive delay, the game needs another 6-12 months of patches.

This review WILL be updated as time goes on. My full review will also take into account the absolute shadiness of CDPR in general.

It does look like this game will still be an incredibly solid 8/10 once things get ironed out, but currently it's just not there. There are indie early access games that show more polish.

All I have to really say is - it's still Half-Life.

Notice I didn't say it's still JUST Half-Life. Because as an iconic game of the genre, there is no "just" Half-Life.

Worth it for old fans and new blood alike.

Tough to decide whether to recommend this or not.

If you enjoyed Eternal's main campaign, and are ready for the difficulty to ramp up from what you saw there, you'll enjoy this DLC. Totally recommended as an expansion to Eternal.

Platforming is more frequent, but more straightforward. Excellent refinement from Eternal.

The only issue I can see is the price. 100% completion at UV difficulty took right around 2-2.5 hours. Nightmare might take a smidge longer, but overall it's extremely short. Not enough new content and toys to justify the launch price tag of $20.

If it had come with additional multiplayer content or even just a few new master levels, I think they could justify the price just a bit more.

As it is, even for fans of the base game I can't recommend this DLC at more than $10. And this is coming from a staunch fan and defender of D16 and Eternal.

Basically, if you really enjoyed Eternal and want more, right now, go for it - just be aware that unless you're really big on replaying it multiple times, it doesn't offer much content, at all, for the price.

Edit: Check my achievements for Eternal, I did finish the DLC at 100%. Due to the funky way this has been released, Steam shows no playtime for the DLC. Apparently since I got it through the Year One Pass.