Reseñas recientes de Incinerico

An excellent and reasonably priced X-Com title that lays the groundwork for what the Earth will likely look and feel like when X-Com 3 becomes an eventuality. This title deals with Police actions against an Insurgency in a single city, rather than a Global battle against an invasion force, so Firaxis were able to make this a more narrative focused game where we get to know several different characters both Human and Alien.

In this post war world, following the events of X-Com 2 where the X-Com-led Resistence destroyed the "Elders" who were essentially keeping the various alien races in Thrall, the various alien species that landed in the invasion have integrated into Earth society, having no-where else to go. This leads to tension as well as teething problems for all involved, including our own squad, where tensions and old wounds occasionally get brought to the surface.

In general, this is an interesting idea that somewhat fleshes out the personalities and thought processes of the various aliens which had appeared before to be nothing more than mindless meat-shields. I like the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" vibe that this game has, with each character having their own distinct personalities, abilities and visuals, a plot that feels like Season 1 of an ongoing show and just enough worldbuilding and artistic flair to really set the stage. All of this married to the X-Com gameplay that we know and love with an all-new "Breach" mechanic that allows the player to plan how they'll enter a building, including whether to use explosives, grenades or even vents to get the drop on enemies! For what we're paying for this, the game is an absolute treat. :)

What this presents however are several practical difficulties, such as voice-over that is delivered almost purely in a "human" way, if that makes sense. In particular, I feel like Torque (Who is voiced by the always awesome Erica Lindbeck) sounds oddly unlike what you'd guess an anthropomorphic Snake might sound like and she's by no means alone in that...it's almost like the powers that be at 2K just told the actors to do the reads normally with only the most basic of briefs and no idea of what the game was that they were working on, which if true, sucks. The difficulty is frankly insane in places also. With the removal of the Sniper and Heavy classes, it rarely feels like an even playing field towards the latter third of the game, as the technological aspect of research is in no way as strong as in previous titles. Gone are the Power Suits, Heavy Plasmas and other such endgame items and I found the final mission absolutely insufferable as a procession of four soldiers vs the world (Despite knowing that this was the big operation to take down the big bad, which should have allowed us to keep our other squadmates on standby during the mission instead of the bloody Androids I had to use in the final room!) was neither tactical, nor fun. The fact that Terminal is an absolute must-pick in order to even survive missions is really harmful to the diversity of playstyles and I feel like she's also the most annoying character to boot...though not to an offputting degree.

I'd definitely like to see a Chimera Squad II sometime, though in that sequel I would expect a little more flexibility in team composition and research options as well as a Sniper character as an option, even if their skills are more in line with SWAT than with the insanely effective kit we had access to in X-2.

Overall, I loved it, it's an absolute steal at the price, a welcome surprise from Firaxis and I look forward to more smaller projects like this that take advantage of existing tech to create something fresh, yet familiar. Well done!

Yes...but...the formula is getting very, very tired. There will be SPOILERS in this review, so be forewarned and forearmed.

First, the good;

- The dialogue and setting are generally well written and there are plenty of good characters, helped by an extended cameo from Jesus.

- QTEs are far less monotonous.

- Runtime is surprisingly long for a narritive game of its type.

- Some excellent moments, tension and choices to be made.

Then the 'meh.'

- Some of the choices we make are meaningless, much like other Walking Dead games and nothing grates me more than circular choice illusions in this game. (The death of Carley / Doug in season 1 continues to irk me, as does the random deaths that plague the series of characters like Luke, Sinita and Alvin. We're getting into slasher film territory here and it's a little too much.)

Then the straight up 'bad.'

- Ava...how she's handled, the meaningless and unnecessary death after putting in the work to save her felt like Ben in TWD and then later Kenny in same...a death for the sake of thinning the cast and driving the danger up, despite them really not needing to do that. Good character, absolutely abysmal writing for her death. Tripp is handled the same way, but with far less respect since he has more dialogue and time to gel with the party. Ava is far more capable than her end showed and the characters reaction to her death is sudden, basic and extremely rushed. POOR.

- Jane...how they handle her after such a monumental and pivotal ending to S2 where you had to kill Kenny if you sided with her, only for her to off herself early in this one for being pregnant (Quite an insulting thing for them to do in all honestly.) is quite beyond me...we left S2 with Jane ecstatic that Clem forgave her, yet then after surviving for so long, forging this strong bond and WANTING to protect Clem, she suddenly loses it and does this?! Abysmal.

- Kenny...why don't they address what happened to Kenny if you sided with him?! Surely now that we're moving to the last season he'll not be coming back! Same with Christa. Same with the other game survivors who have managed to make it out of their respective games alive.

- The progression towards the best possible ending. OK, so I know it's possible to save at least two of the three determinant characters by the end of this episode...so why is it so bloody hard to work out if we're on the right track?! I did as much as I could for David, Kate and others, but despite maintaining solid relationships with everyone, I got the middle ending where I was only able to save one person. It feels to me like the 'optimal' path is hidden from us through the obtuse choices and I found the ending of this one to be wholelly unsatisfying.


*SPOILERS END*



Overall, I recommend this game if you're a fan of the series and want to see what happens next, however, I can't recommend it if you aren't a fan as there's not a lot of actual 'game' here so much as a very well put together motion comic. It pales in comparison to Tales from the Borderlands, The Wolf Among Us and Telltale Batman, but if you like your Telltale stories, you can't do wrong by this.

Battleborn is an FPS-MOBA crossbreed in the emergent 'Hero Shooter' genre by Gearbox, creators of such awesomeness as Borderlands and the original Counterstrike and producers of such utter steaming cow dung as Aliens: Colonial Marines (An outsourced botch job by Timegate Studios that they had to remake in six months from the ground up that was most definitely their fault. This game almost made me swear off buying from Gearbox again due to Randy Pitchford's attitude afterwards.) and Duke Nukem Forever. (Abandoned Vaporware from 3D Realms that 2K bought from them and gave to Gearbox to complete- not their fault.).

So first things first, I wasn't interested in this game in the beginning, I saw it at the Playstation Experience and sortof went 'meh' because the truth is, I normally hate MOBAs. I never got into Smite, don't enjoy the gameplay of League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Heroes of Newerth and so as soon as I see the term 'FPSMOBA' being applied, I rolled my eyes.

Then the Open Beta happened and I learned that actually, this game has a PVE story element similar to Borderlands. 'Cool.' I gave it a go and played 'The Voids Edge' first and didn't get off to a great start as our wolf sentry, affectionately known as 'Wolfie' that we were tasked with protecting died halfway through my first game. Damn...

Then I played 'The Algorithm' and was introduced to two of my favourite Battleborn characters...Geoff and ISIC.

I'm not going to spoil the level, but suffice it to say that it was the most fun level of a game that I've played all year and the dialogue was *EXCELLENT* and I was hooked, but cautious...I didn't know how many story missions there'd be and how much of the weight of the game would be on the Multiplayer, which I never thought in a million years that I'd enjoy.

So, I was going to uninstall the Beta and call it a day after completing the two available story missions during that test...when I just said 'f*** it' and loaded into a PVP queue for Incursion.

My god was I ever wrong, I loved the PVP even more than the PVE!! :D

'Incursion' is a semi-traditional MOBA mode where you push creepwaves (Known as 'Minions' in true Gearbox fashion) up to a Robot Sentry (Which act as this game's towers) in order to get past it and attack the enemy's main base. There are mercenaries that spawn periodically that you can also fight to recruit them into joining your minions as well as turrets, accellerator-points and a spawnable 'Elite Minion' that can be built and recruited using 'shards' the games currency. Games can last up to 30 minutes.

I was hooked completely from there on in and went to clock in over 40 hours during Open Beta. There was another mode available to me during that time, which was; 'Meltdown.' An unorthodox take on the MOBA formula, Meltdown sees you defending and attacking across two lanes. The object of this mode is to escort your minions into 'grinders' (Which are actually the gaming maw of a crazed and psychotic 'Magnus' AI called MINREC.) in order to stave off MINREC's wrath and ensure that he doiesn't murder your whole team. This mode is much more directly about battlefield control and working out when is appropriate to attack and disengage. Again, games of this type can last up to 30 minutes.

Throughout my time with this game, I found the dialogue to be funny and generally well written, the plot is basic and does just enough to keep you engaged and interested (Though may hamper future titles if this is to become a series.) the gameplay is fluid and there are many diverse hero types each with a role they can play and wiggle room to adapt them to your playstyle through a 10 level skill system called the 'Helix System.' Playing a tank, but want more damage? Well, there's usually a skill for that. Playing an attacker, but there's no healer on the team? Why not spec into Life leech? I find the system to be pretty cool at this point.

I'm not normally a fan of melee in a first person shooter and this I confess is my biggest problem with the game as it's easy for enemies to move erratically and bunnyhop out of your melee range unless you can somehow stunlock them into place and this is definitely an area I hope that improves over time.

There's also a Control Point multiplayer mode too which is great for trying new heroes and having a quick game, clocking at just 10 minutes!

So, having bought the Deluxe Edition of this game, I've got to say I'm having no regrets. Sure, there are some balance issues and exploits at present, but the game has only been out two weeks so-far and we haven't had our first major patch as of yet. Gearbox are active on their forum and a little less on the Reddit about the development of patches and content and they often ask for our feedback and input. The story mode missions can get a little bit samey, but there's enough there for some good replay value and rewards for playing that you can take into PVP in the form of 'Gear Items' that you can activate also using shards.

All in all, I think Battleborn is a surprisingly excellent game with a fresh sense of humour and launched surprisingly smoothly considering how modern Multiplayer launches tend to go. (The Division & Diablo III come to mind immediately.) If you like Team Fortress 2 or Monday Night Combat but would like a splash of DOTA or League in there for good measure, I'd recommend giving this game a go. I love it, I've clocked in over 100 hours (Beta included) with it so far and it'll be with me for a long, long time to come.

Now, well over a year after release, unfortunately this game's fate is sealed. The game made a transition a few months ago towards a Free to Play model and unfortunately never recovered the many players that it lost after launch to titans like Overwatch and PUBG. That said, I'll always look back over my time with this game with fond memories and now that all of the story content has been released, I can safely say that at the extremely low prices this game now sells at, you'd be mad not to pick up a copy just to play through the PVE missions and enjoy the wacky characters, fun dialogue and non-linear storytelling (There's about 3 - 5 different ways a story will play out as well as tonnes of objectives that change each time you play.)

Battleborn is a very good video game that is a victim of its publisher (2K do not make good decisions with games like this- just ask Evolve and the latest NBA game with it's faux-freemium economy to improve your player in a full-priced 'Fee-to-Pay' game.) and of being released just before one of the most successful videogames of all time, Overwatch. We only have so-much time to devote to games and unfortunately, alot of people dropped this very quickly. I myself have stopped playing both, but I did get well over 120 hours out of this game across BETA and launch and am overall very happy with it.

Never die Battleborn...never die. :'(

I'm a huge fan of the Resident Evil series and have prided myself in giving each game in the series a shot...so I decided to give this one a bash even after not enjoying RE5 and the absolutely abortionate Operation Raccoon City.

I regret that decision. I absolutely dispise this game.

First, the game dumps me right into the thick of it without so much as being able to map the controls, change the sensitivities and turn subtitles on, but then I actually get to shoot something- with the exact same horrible hit detection and lack of feedback that plagued ORC (And I might add that both RE4 and 5 got exactly right.) along with a lack of explaination on how melee works, a much more difficult and far less satisfying gameplay mechanic for knives and herbs, a far, far more buggy and uncertain Melee command with very little (And inaccurately late) prompting and a severe lack of ammo. All of this is evident in the first ten minutes.

Add to that the action movie scene of the entire street becoming engulfed in an explosion that you just barely escape into the helecopter, only to find the pilot inexplicably not only wounded but somehow INFECTED without any explaiantion or plausability whatsoever, who then proceeds to turn instantly and attack your partner, showing once again Capcom's lack of writing skill and thematic consistency with their own lore.

Of course, there are QTEs and they're just as unsatisfying as RE4 and RE5, only there are EVEN MORE of them. In the 76 minutes that I managed of this game, I'd performed over 20 QTEs and was auto-attacked by so many scripted, railroaded 'enemies' that my head was spinning.

So, after the high octane Michael Bay stylings of the intro, I'm then railroaded into a slow and very predictable 'horror' gameplay sequence as Leon where I'm force-walking down a corridor for 20 minutes unable to take the prudent measure of pre-killing zombies (Something we were able to do in Dead Space, several years prior) that we can see have already turned but aren't 'activated' yet. We happen upon an infected survivor and his infected survivor daughter that Leon doesn't realise is infected despite being the literal biggest expert in Bioterrorism that the Secret Service have...and then we're force-script attacked in an elevator with four 'enemies' piling into us without ANY EXPLAINATION OF HOW MELEE WORKS IN THIS GAME!! I'm trying to shoot them in the head instead of booting them out the door like a numpty and find that ultra-close range shooting is about as accurate as Starfox Zero and about half as satisfying.

Add to that how unbearably dark the game is even with the gamma turned down and you have an absolutely miserable experience both in terms of looks and in terms of gameplay.

The voice acting seems to be of a much higher quality, but the dialogue is stiff, formal and extremely cliché at pretty much all times undermining any attempt at serious storytelling that this game pretends to- exactly like RE5 only much more braindead. Think 'Chris Redfield punching a boulder' stupid...it's that bad.

The final straw that broke my back was the scene where Leon and Helena get in a police car...I have to QTE to find the keys, then QTE accelerate and then QTE reverse to avoid some 'enemies.'

Next thing I know 'ARGH, OH NOES, DERRS STILL BAD GUYS ON MY CAARRR!!' and instead of shooting them in the head as I had done in every weapon QTE and Leon had done in most cutscenes, instead he decided to steer-flip the car, roll it over, totally trash it and then think nothing of doing so. DONE!! I'M SO DONE!! I'M SO COMPLETELY TOTALLY UTTERLY DONE WITH THIS ABSOLUTE WASTE OF MY TIME AND ENERGY!

So the gameplay is a 3 / 10.

The graphics are a 6 / 10.

The story and dialogue that I played through is a 2 / 10.

The UI and menu system is a 2 / 10.

The weapons, Inventory management (A Resident Evil staple that was completely ripped out of the heart of this game) and control feedback are a 2 / 10.

This game is at most a 3 / 10. It's exceptionally bad in terms of gameplay, hideously braindead in its storytelling, has a UI that in 2016 is a clunky mess of a thing that does not befit the series and is really only marginally better than the absolutely shambolic Operation Raccoon City- a game which I suspect this shares an engine and shares its weapon registration and hit detection with. (And I might add, beat this game as my 'Worst game of 2012' by quite a large margin- ORC is THAT bad.)

I'd love nothing more than to be able to say that I enjoyed this, but then I'd be lying.

It's a disaster. An utter disaster.

Do not buy this game unless you want a very poor action game that happens to have a co-op story mode (Which might make it better) and you're not a Resident Evil fan. (Or a fan of the movies.)

If you want a decent action Resident Evil, get the Revelations games, they're written, feel, play, and look far better and are a fraction of the cost.

Absolutely pitiful display from Capcom here.

Pitiful. :(

This is a port of a Mobile version of FF9 and has many UI and control problems. I requested a Steam Refund for this title as it is not in a playable PC state, comes with very, very little graphical options or updates and as I kept my PS1 copy, I'm more than happy to wait on a real PC version of this game to come along.

Some of the sounds, especially during the card minigame are horribly EQed as well and aren't a patch on the original PS1 classic. (The noise of the card game made me want to stop immediately.)

Shameful port of one of the best games of all time. :(

PROs:

+ Kombat is enjoyable for the most part when the game works

+ Tower Mode is solid as always

+ Some great new characters

+ Krypt is better than ever

CONs:

- Poor, extremely unstable netcode.

- Extremely poor PC support, bugs will never be fixed. They pulled an Arkham Knight on this game as well. :(

- 2 Hour long campaign that isn't very well written, badly paced and offs some classic characters for pretty much no other reason other than to put over the newbies.

- Story is not well fleshed out, many major classic characters are either left out or outright ignored in favour of the new characters. Characters like Baraka, Bo Rai Cho, Rain, Sindel, Sheeva, Smoke, Sektor, Cyrax and Tanya were left on the cutting room floor for DLC, or for outright exclusion in some cases.

- Smaller Roster than MK9 for no other reason other than the fact that WB/Netherrealm can withold some finished characters for future DLC packs.

- Ending of MK9 is still not explained, character deaths in MK9 made canon, then unmade at will...nothing makes sense.


- Nonsensical treatment of their PC fanbase with the exclusion of DLC that will be made available to console players only.

- DLC Characters don't make any sense to either the lore (Which is already lacking enough as it is in this one) or the universe

- High base price for an unfinished and feature-lacking game.


Avoid this game on PC.

CS GO is fundamentally a good game that is ruined both by its mechanics and its playerbase. Like its predecessors CS Source and Counterstrike, the basic gameplay is that of two teams; Counter Terrorists and Terrorists competing against each other to score objectives or destroy their opposition. The idea is great, the core gameplay is compelling and addictive but problems with the playerbase, game balancing and also with the development support from the company itself threaten to destroy the game for the upstanding and the rule abiding forever.

Being as how the core gameplay is meant to be taken as competition play, this game very often borders on the ridiculous as trolls, cheaters and skin farming de-ranking toxics very often dominate the game with very little active moderation, support or care from Valve, Hidden Path or even the community at large.

Few things are as demoralising as committing yourself to a 90 minute game, only to find that you've been matched with racist, toxic, potentially cheating and possibly duplicitous trolls who gain their enjoyment from ruining your game.

With the whole point to this game being player improvement, tactics, skill and teamwork an alarming number of players see nothing wrong with players of a higher skill buying another account and deliberately playing with lower skilled players 'For the lols.' Worse still, playing with those people who also cheat also means that you're not learning anything and are forced to waste up to 90 minutes of your life in a game that both serves no purpose and also will likely lead to your inevitible de-ranking on Valve's new broken ranking system.

Under the old system, I managed to work my ass off to get to Distinguished Master Guardian, a fairly high rank in the game. This game me quite a good sense of achievement and made me feel as though I was improving well at the game. Unfortunately, Valve made changes to this system this month that deliberately and fairly maliciously have led to me losing ranks and being matched up with the kinds of players that I worked so hard to try to get away from 'Smurfs' and new account cheaters.

Add to that frequent changes to weapon and economy balance usually with a view towards making it harder for the CT side to buy up and giving the Terrorist side much more viable and effective weaponry at much lower prices, changes to the handguns in the game that mean that only the TEC9 and FIVESEVEN are in any way viable or optimal, ( * 2 clips of bullets for a USP, P2000 or P250 isn't nearly enough, Glock does so little damage that it could almost be considered non-lethal, R8 Revolver has lost any viability it might have had thanks to their insistance on copy-pasting weaspon traits from the AWP first and now the Scout.) the fact that the AK47 is by far and away by a HUGE margin the best gun in the game and the fact that matchmaking takes place in servers that are unable to record every shot that is fired accurately, making sure effectively that some of your bullets fail to register altogether and you have a game that is unbalanced at best, outright broken at worst.

Being a 'weekend warrior' with a real job that keeps me out of the house for a very long time in a week, these changes to the game have left me deflated, demoralised and very much of the opinion that there's no point to playing this game anymore, because after all, if I do put in the time, effort and commitment to play this game and manage to improve my ranking situation, sure they'll just change it to make it harder again.

Chief to this problem is the fact that CS GO regularly goes on sale at an extremely low price, lowering the barrier of entry to the kinds of players who ruin this game, ruin this community and ruin the internet.

It smacks to me of Valve setting up CS GO to emulate games like League of Legends or DOTA in terms of the majority of their playerbase being alienated from the professionals and left to fight in a sort-of 'Wild West' matchmaking situation that if I'm honest completely misses the point of this sort of game. Why would I play a game that is set up to actively discourage me to play? Why would I spend money in a marketplace of a game that does that? Why would I continue to support this game when the developer has shown utter contempt for the newbies, the upstanding and the players who support the real way to play this game?

The recent balance fiasco is a great example of exactly the sort of bull that regularly gets shoved down the CS Community's throat...the devs decided to nerf the main rifles in the game AND at the same time nerf every pistol while simultaneously introducing a pistol that could one shot kill a player from across the map. All of our competitive games during and after the nerf counted, so if we lost as a result of not being able to learn the balancing quickly on account of actually having a job and responsabilities, it still contributes to you losing your rank...and THEN, they told the community that they 'reverted' the changesd to the way they were before, but as it turns out this was an outright lie as recovery times for the rifles have since been found to be different again to what they were before December.

Save yourself the time, money, hassle and grief of playing this game and instead put it to something constructive, something that isn't designed to drain your time, lump you in with toxics and actively discourage you from playing and enjoying the game.

I came into this on recommendations from my brother and some close friends. They told me 'It's a lot like Left 4 Dead, but instead of guns you stove lads loafs in with maces, axes, swords, staves and hammers...and then maybe shoot them afterwards.' (Or something to that effect. :p )

So first, the good.

+ The four player co-op vs horde that made Left 4 Dead such a breakaway hit is as tried, true and tested here as it was all those glorious years ago.

+ There are 5 characters to choose from, each of whom play a little differently from each other out of the box. There's a little something for everyone here, with a fast attacking, rapid firing yet somehow sniperiffic Elf, a hard hitting, hard shooting but slow moving Dwarf, an armoured wall of steel in the Sergeant, a rapid gunning Demon Hunter and most difficult but useful of all a pyromaniacal Bright Wizard (Basically a human flamethrower.)

+ Each class can be customised with several different weapons of each type, ensuring that you can always find a way to work with any of the classes.

+ The level design is very, very good. In much the same way as Left 4 Dead allowed plenty of routes through a level as well as plenty of hidey-holes for Special Infected, Vermintide keeps this tradition alive and well.

+ Warhammer authenticity is absolutely spot-on. Weapons look and feel like they should, character design is on-point, backdrops are exactly as you imagine they'd be in Warhammer Fantasy.

+ Skaven are the perfect enemy for this first game. There are plenty of enemy types that can offer any level of challenge you're looking for.

+ The best Warhammer Action game since Fire Warrior in terms of fun.

+ No Microtransactions. I bought this game at a great price brand new and have access to all of the content, which in 2015 is a rare and admirable decision. It would have been easy to take a low-road approach to cosmetic items, weapons and maps in this game, but Fatshark instead took the decision to actually sell us a videogame! (A very good one at that!)

RESPECT!

Now for the stuff I'm not so sold on...

- AI partners are very, very stupid. They oftentimes will not pick up items, even when signposted by the player to do so, they regularly ignore your plight when you're hooked or stabbed, they often stand right in the gas cloud and they are generally useless in a fight. (Though an AI Elf will rip up with a bow.)

- No Checkpointing. If your party wipes, it's game over and back to the lobby. No continues, no going back to the midway point. I feel this is a negative because there are times when the AI throws everything but the kitchen sink at you and no matter how well you play, sometimes you're getting the dreaded Hook, Assassin, Gas, Horde and Ogre attack at once that is just insurmountable in this game without a cohesive team with the best of loot. Some gamers will like this, but not all of us have the kind of free time available when we're working full time to constantly retry levels over and over with little reward or ability to progress. I'm not asking for the game to 'be casual' but I am suggesting that it could have taken a leaf out of the L4D playbook just one more time.

- Enemy balance is slightly off. Hook Rats move far too quickly while dragging a player character, especially in light of how slow the player moves with a grain sack or barrell. Assassins can't be blocked, even if you're rocking a shield. Stormvermin on the harder modes seem to shrug off headshots and do insane one-hit damage. Rat Ogres are far, far tougher than tanks in L4D and in alot of these maps, there are environmental traps like water and ledges that the Ogre can knock you off in a single hit and with the limited range of the dodge, it's extremely difficult to evade or even conduct combat with the Ogre effectively without some real problems. Some minor tweaks would improve game flow.

- Movement glitches. Multiple times, I found myself getting stuck immobile on stairs and staircases and in a game where mobility is as important as it is in this one, that's something that really needs to not happen. At times, it's like running into an invisible wall.

- Randomisation of the loot. I've been playing this game for 18+ hours so-far and I've got to say, the amount of times I roll the dice and the dice turn up all blank has been slightly alarming. Dice rolls can often be a difficult mechanic to nail down but curently it feels like there might be something janked about the RNG, because even with special dice from an incredible run, I have extremely rarely got above three successes.

- No cameos from other types of creatures in this game. We get to a crypt that has an eerie green glow and there's no undead? In Warhammer? That's a little odd. I can understand, this is the first game and what they've put outthere so-far is excellent, but I think that could have been pretty cool. Just a nitpick, not a huge thing at all.

- It's a little too similar to Left 4 Dead. I love L4D, it's a phenomenal game that gave me the best multiplayer experiences I'd had since Resident Evil Outbreak 2 (My favourite ever online game) so it's a great template to use, however I feel that there's just a little too much of that and not quite enough to set this game apart. Again, I'm nitpicking, because in all honesty, you're giving me more of a good thing here.

And finally, the ugly.

- - Always Online. If the connection to Steam drops, say for an unexpected outage, your game won't continue offline, it will simply reset. Last night, I lost three games to connection issues on the server side, which is potentially three loot items and upwards of three XP levels...that's a hell of a blow through no fault of my own. More importantly, it's a hell of a waste of my ever dwindling free-time!

- - The loot system in this game is completely random and will only pay out to a player on a successful completion...This leads on nicely to the next point;

- - Level-based matchmaking system has bred elitism into this community. Unfortunately, some groups of players will look at your level when you join a game in progress and turn their nose up at the help. With the AI being as poor in utility as it is, it absolutely baffles me why some groups will throw you out of the party when you've used the 'matchmaking' service in good faith. At over level 15, I find myself when I solo queue for some Hard Mode games, I'm kicked from the group after helping them through a particularly tough fight because 'You're too low scrubnoob.'

While I can understand the frustration that can be caused by new players jumping immediately into the hardest modes, as this game is longer and longer released, you're going to find that new players will become ostracised and frustrated by this kind of ingrained elitism. Alot of this problem isn't necessarily the community themselves, but more to do with the design decision on how loot is distributed. If a player goes through a 40 minute + slog through a level, only to die right at the end and get absolutely nothing for it with no checkpointing or continuing mid-game, (Unlike L4D) of course they're going to be *slightly* precious about maximising their chances of winning, matchmaking be damned.


Overall, Vermintide is a very good game that offers up some good co-operative gameplay, fun challenges and all at an impressive pricepoint. For the money, it's well worth giving this a go, especially if you enjoyed Left 4 Dead or other co-op games. I'm very impressed with what FatShark have given us here and this game is only going to get better as it's further patched and updated. I hear they've got a content patch coming adding tonnes of new gear and such this coming December and that at this point is exciting.

My faith in Sigmar is strong.

Score: 12 rats out of 7 bathtubs.

Played this game for 16 hours. At least six of those hours were spent updating the roster and downloading CAWs in order to try and make this game at least somewhat up-to-date.

Spent over an hour creating a CAW of myself. The body features are the absolute most primitive that they've been since the PS2 era and I found that I could only facially make a guy that somewhat resembled me and actually looks like every other CAW out there. Clothing system was good in terms of detail, but extremely poor in terms of not being able to mirror knee/elbowpads and make the character's attire symmetrical. What should have taken me no more than 20 minutes took over an hour thanks to poor optimisation and awful loading times.

No game should require the amount of set-up and 'housekeeping' that this one does. You insist on making a WWE sports game, yet you refuse to give it the kind of updates and authenticity in terms of how up-to-date the roster is as well as not providing nearly enough tools to create missing characters for ourselves. If you're not going to have Zach Ryder in the game, but you're willing to keep his moveset in there as a template, is it really too much to ask to have access to his music and tron as well, considering they are available in your library?! Edge and Christian were absent from this one, again, there's moves and move templates, but no music...no tron...no tools!!

Speaking of tools, the actual meat and gravy of the game itself is still riddled and infested with bugs, including a really awesome ( :/ ) one that my CAW encountered while defending his NXT title in the extremely sparse, non-voiced MyCareer mode. I selected 'Spear 1' as his finish, only to find that not once, but twice did my character fail to lock on to the enemy character, miss the attack and actually take damage, drop to a knee and allow the opponent to take over the flow of the match. This is game breaking and unacceptable of a full priced title in 2015. I've read that this was a known issue months ago, so the fact that this game has become abandonware in such a short space of time is absolutely astonishing to me.

Even on low settings with V-Sync turned off, performance is extremely shoddy and controller input frequently lags behind the action, which in a game where you are utterly, crippilingly reliant on reversing everything, completely breaks the gameplay experience.

This game was released in April and was never fixed. I've paid my hard earned money for this game and it was never fixed.

I genuinely used to love WWE games and was extremely excited for this one finally releasing on PC...I thought of the many awesome and incredible things that the modding community could do with it, custom titantrons, custom music, community roster updates...all of these things were blocked by 2K because this is a direct port of the console version of the game, warts and all. Not only are the creation tools provided substandard, but the game doesn't...even...work

2K, I really, honestly and genuinely wish that I didn't have to write this. When you aquired this license from THQ, I celebrated that aquisition because I believed you'd do what needed to be done and overhaul the ageing technology and deliver the ultimate WWE sports game. I'm sad that I've been proven wrong about you and that I have to tell you today how absolutely horrible my experience with this game has been.

I'm sorry to say that as it stands, I'm not only finished with your WWE games but also with 2K games as a whole, because quite frankly, when I pay my hard earned money for an entertainment product and it does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do, then you're doing it wrong for making it and I'm doing it wrong for buying it and putting up with it.

My biggest suggestion in closing would be to take a year out and figure out how to improve the game, rather than releasing seasonal updates that are out-of-date, not fun to play and unpolished/finished.

Good Luck.

3 / 10

EDIT: I understand based on reading and video that WWE2K16 is a similar story, in that it has a huge roster that is mostly out-of-date, has failed to include the HUGELY important Four Horsewomen and again has a slew of bugs affecting gameplay. Again, I can't recommend enough skipping 2K17 and focusing on what you need to to bring this up to scratch.

This is my Game of the Year. It really is that good. :D