The last game you completed, and rating.

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really boring errand boy affair with terrible pacing

All a matter of opinion of course, the world would be a dull place if everyone liked exactly the same things but FO4 to me was exactly that. Quick, I must save my son but not before I do a million go and fetch quests for souless NPCs and build a settlement for more lifeless NPCs to congregate. I like Witcher 3 because of the world they created, everywhere you go is full of life and character. There were certainly issues with level scaling on quests but I ignored the level requirement and focused on being immersed in the world and nothing else has come close in that regard, in my opinion.
 
Soldato
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Doom 2016 - 7/10

A good fun shooter, but it got very repetitive towards the end. Levels felt a bit barren and lifeless, very little atmosphere and of course the weak story people seem to be praising so highly. I personally would have liked a mixture of the fun shooting mechanics with more atmosphere, like the balance dead Space managed to achieve.

Weapons were great and i loved the addition of modding the weapons and upgrading them. It helped to add a bit of variation when going from one small arena battle to the next. The challenges also helped to spice things up as they encouraged you to try different weapons if you wanted to get 100% completion.
 
Caporegime
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Brutal Doom: Hell on Earth.

I'm not quite sure what to give this since I've been playing other games in between, so it was a somewhat diluted experience. Overall, I guess I would probably say around 8 - 8.5/10. Well worth playing if you like older games which have been given a new lease of life with mods.
 
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Finally finished Dying Light vanilla. Have to say I enjoyed all of it. Still have some side missions left to go back to in the future. The game looks beautiful and is a joy to look at. It's getting an 8/10 from me.
 
Soldato
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I've finally managed to finish Witcher 3 after a year:D Level 35, 67h in according to Steam (though I've spent an additional 20h or so with the GoG version).

As I've previously said, good game but has too many gameplay/mechanics flaws to be called a true RPG masterpiece or "the best game of all time".

Cons:

-the story was rather dull and predictable, didn't impress me even half as much as Witcher 2's politics-driven plot, there were bits and characters they could've easily scrapped without any singificant hindrance to the plot

-only a couple of memorable characters

-the size of the world seemed to work against the game, a more compact and better designed setting could've really done wonders here

-the combat/traversal was a bit too clunky to be truly enjoyable

-terrible levelling issues and pointless loot made exploration somewhat unrewarding

-uneven graphical presentation

-messy UI

Pros:

-Polish dialogues were outstanding and very entertaining, there was quite a lot of stuff that's practically intranslatable so I'm really glad I could play through the game in its original form

-sidequests outshined the main storyline by quite a margin and many of them were a joy to play

-discovering new places was still enjoyable

-the graphics were impressive at times

-Gwent

-Lambert!

-The Bloody Baron questline

Overall, it's a solid 8/10 in my book as the game's still way above average. Definitely worth playing but the level of enjoyment you'll get out of it is largely dependent on your expectations, so it's best not to listen to all the hype as many people deem it to be practically flawless and it just isn't. Far from it. Some will find it brilliant, some will find it just good.

Well, I guess it's time to tackle the expansions:D
 
Soldato
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many people deem it to be practically flawless and it just isn't.
I dont know many people who have claimed it is flawless. I think what many do say is that what it does well more than makes up for the negatives it has, though. Also if somebody gives it a 10/10, it doesn't mean they necessarily thought it was flawless or perfect.

Anyways, I recently beat Dark Souls 3.

RERb.jpg


I usually like to write out a fairly thorough review, but I'll keep this one shorter. The Souls formula is generally pretty well known by most now so not too much need in harping on about how great all that is.

I will say I think this is the best Souls game, though. It is a culmination of the refinements made in all the games leading up to it and it has a fairly astounding level of consistency in quality throughout the entire 60 hours it took me to finish it. The combat is faster than previous Souls games, though not as fast as Bloodborne. I felt this was a perfect balance. They adopted the 'multistage' boss philosophy pretty hard and that's a great thing. I imagine it's going to make a lot of the one-note bosses in the 'older' games feel a bit lackluster by comparison. I also like that there's very few 'slow' bosses. These tended to be the easiest and least exciting in previous games, so most all bosses in DS3, even the bigger ones, tended to have a large variety of moves, many of them quite fast. For me, as somebody who didn't play with a lot of life and no shield, it made my life quite tough and I had to summon for a handful of bosses, which I usually dont do at all. But I definitely appreciated how good they were overall.

Art design and atmosphere was top notch overall, too. Only real complaint was that the image was a bit washed out. I'd seen some Reshade presets that address this fairly well but I also heard that it could potentially lead to activating the cheat protection and getting a soft ban, so I didn't go for it.

I do agree with some of the complaints that it felt a bit less inspired than previous games, though I dont agree with those saying that it was 'lazy' because they revisited old areas. The areas they did go back to were mostly entirely redesigned and if they had some familiar enemies, they would always have some new twists and tricks. Maybe it was a bit of fanservice, but I think it was executed supremely well. At no point did I feel like anything was being rehashed, it all felt quite fresh still. What I do agree with though, is that the game didn't really push the formula on much. Instead, it takes what was good about Souls and delivers on that in the best way possible, while cleaning up many of the flaws or lows that previous games all had to some degree or another.

All in all, a 9.5/10 from me. I really loved it and if it's the last Souls game ever made, it was a great way to go out. Though I do expect another Bloodborne at some point...
 
Soldato
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I dont know many people who have claimed it is flawless. I think what many do say is that what it does well more than makes up for the negatives it has, though. Also if somebody gives it a 10/10, it doesn't mean they necessarily thought it was flawless or perfect.

Just going by some opinions I've heard and general hype. As for the game making up for its negatives with its positives, I agree, it mostly does.

Anyways, I'm really interested in Dark Souls. Always wanted to play it but never got round to it. In terms of story, will I miss out much by jumping straight into III or are the games rather loosely connected? Is it a huge time sink? I seem to have developed a morbid fear of games like Witcher 3 or Fallout 4 simply because they're so gigantic and I don't really like playing for more than two hours at a time (and I rarely do). Also, is it excruciatingly difficult throughout or does it become manageable after a while? I do like some challenge but don't want to be put off by difficulty since I'm hardly a hardcore player.
 
Soldato
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Just going by some opinions I've heard and general hype. As for the game making up for its negatives with its positives, I agree, it mostly does.

Anyways, I'm really interested in Dark Souls. Always wanted to play it but never got round to it. In terms of story, will I miss out much by jumping straight into III or are the games rather loosely connected? Is it a huge time sink? I seem to have developed a morbid fear of games like Witcher 3 or Fallout 4 simply because they're so gigantic and I don't really like playing for more than two hours at a time (and I rarely do). Also, is it excruciatingly difficult throughout or does it become manageable after a while? I do like some challenge but don't want to be put off by difficulty since I'm hardly a hardcore player.
Story is mostly ignorable in the Souls games. There's a loose plot and plenty of background lore(pretty much solely told through the item descriptions) for those who want to uncover all that, but it's not at all a mandatory part of the experience. And yes, all Dark Souls games are somewhat linked, but not in any traditional way. Basically, if you're into the lore, you'll get more out of DS3 if you've played the others. Again - not imperative to the enjoyment of the game, though. I honestly couldn't tell you what was going on for the most part and I've played them all, DS1 and DS2 a couple times.

And the games are time investments. Not 100+ hour epics, but easily 50+ hours for a first playthrough. They're big games and it often takes time to tackle areas and bosses. Everything is definitely manageable and while the game doesn't have any easy mode, it has methods of making things easier if you're hitting a wall. But yes, they're quite difficult. Challenging is probably a better word. Pretty much every area will see a ramp up in toughness and it's down to you to figure out how to survive and overcome it. It's incredibly rewarding when you do, though. Moreso than just about any other game I've ever played. The combat feels amazing once you get used to it and there's such a huge variety of dastardly and incredible enemies to face. Seriously, they're the best designed foes of any game ever. And the level design is just fantastic with tons of satisfying exploration and loads of weapons and armors and items to find.

So yea, the games are daunting, but I couldn't think of a better way to spend your gaming time. It took me quite a while before I first jumped into Dark Souls 1 because I was initially put off by all the talk about how hard it is as hard games usually aren't my thing, but I got addicted and never looked back. The games are so highly praised for a reason and I really, really think you need to at least give it a go. Not everybody takes to it, but most do. You can find the first one dirt cheap nowadays. Install DSFix(so you can play it at >720p resolutions and 60fps) if you do so.
 
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Soldato
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Hard Reset 3/10

Decided to give it a try to see if it was worth me getting the discounted new Redux version as I have had it sitting in my steam account for ages and never touched it. Glad I tried the old one first as I didn't like it at all and the redux is supposed to be a downgrade if anything anyway. Unimaginative weapons, boring bullet sponge enemies, dull comic book style cut scenes and it was incredibly short. I didn't even realise I had completed it as the dlc feeds straight into it after the end boss.
 
Soldato
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Dark Souls III - 9.5/10

Best souls game, as expected. The improvements over the original just make this a game that barely had any flaws for me. What an experience!
 
Associate
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Witcher 3 - Blood and Wine.

9/10 It drops a point due to the bittersweet ending and the utterly ridiculous end boss that you have to do all 3 stages with unskippable cutscenes in one go, Death March difficulty meant much rage was had.
 
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