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Recent reviews by acdcdave1387

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1 person found this review helpful
79.7 hrs on record
Pros: Well optimized as far as performance goes, game looks great and runs buttery smooth at 1440p ultrawide on max settings (albeit with Quality FSR).
The difficulty is highly customizable which I love. You can adjust how much damage you deal separate from how much you take. Simple things like that can go a long way to crafting an experience that each type of gamer can enjoy.
As with most all Ubisoft games, the voice acting is high quality. The music is very nice as well. The sound effects are even better. I'd say the sound effects are the best of any AC game to date.
The free roaming and stealth are as they were in the last couple of games. If you enjoyed those aspects of the game then you'll be able to enjoy this one too as nothing has changed there.
Also similar to the other recent games, the world design is superb with lots of detail and the texture work is incredible.

Cons: Buggy crashfest. Runs perfectly smooth but probably crashes more often than any other AC game.
The storytelling is awful. It is extremely rushed and jumps along too quickly. It honestly feels like it was made for younger people with super short attention spans or something. Considering the subject matter and how violent the game is, it doesn't feel professional or serious. As a result, the game feels less immersive and less intense. I would go as far as to say this is the worst story of all the AC games.
The combat isn't that great in my opinion. The character has a stamina bar that goes down WAY too quickly when you dodge, roll or heavy strike.
The tutorial, or lack thereof, is abhorrent. The game does very little to teach you much of anything. I can piece much of it together, having played all the games that came out prior to this one. However, I pity the fool that chooses this to be their first AC game as it does little to explain anything.
Despite Vikings having a very famous type of one handed sword, there are no one handed swords in the game. I think you can get one in one of the expansions but I didn't bother to buy them.
Vikings are the wrong theme for a protagonist in this series. The setting is fine as I love this history but you can't really be a paragon if you're literally going around raiding and pillaging innocents. They should have kept the theme but made the main character either a Saxon or maybe a mix.

Overall, it isn't a 'bad' game but it's definitely not great. This should have been a separate game, not related to the AC universe as it would make more sense what with the Vikings being brutal murderers and such.
Posted 24 December, 2024.
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30.8 hrs on record
Pros: Terrific voice acting. The voiced scenes are great. It is as professional as it gets.
The attention to detail is exquisite. The skin blemishes, nose rests on the glasses, shadows in the dimples or around the teeth. It is hard to describe but the amount of work that went into the detailing is incredible.
The texture work is very nice. Everything from city streets to skin. It all looks terrific. I've seen significantly more modern games with less effort put into them.
The storytelling is next level. This is my first Yakuza game and if the others are this good then I have a LOT of fun ahead of me. It is a very long story too, took me nearly 31 hours to finish. Seriously the storytelling is some of the best I've seen. The ending was very complete with plenty of exposition. There's a point mid-credits with text excerpts describing how certain characters ended up in life. Then at the end, there's a couple of post credits scenes that are well worth the wait.
Also, if you've never played a Japanese game before, prepare yourself for some LONG cutscenes.
Game itself and the in-game cutscenes work fine in Ultrawide. Pre-rendered cutscenes are only 16:9 though, unfortunately, as is the UI.
Well optimized game. Max settings on a 1440p ultrawide with nary a frame drop and never had a single crash.
End game, you can free roam and there's plenty of long term content to do to keep you busy if you wanted to keep at it.

Cons: There are some consistency issues in which some scenes are fully voiced, others are voiced but lack animations (no moving mouths) then others have neither and you just read text. The text only dialogue (meaning the non-voiced scenes) is horrifically cheesy but it is mostly limited to the side quests though.
For a fighting game, the fighting isn't that great. Dodging is sketchy at best. There are multiple styles but few combos. There's also no riposte style of system in place so you have to rely on the sketchy dodging which doesn't work all that well.
The sound effects are a little weak. It sounds like a 90s arcade game sometimes.
The camera control is awful and the character movement isn't much better. I played with a gamepad and it just never felt 'right' to me.
The presentation goes from gritty and realistic to all the sudden you glow bright colors due to your aura. It is a bit ridiculous.
The side quests (referred to in game as substories) are incredibly lame. We're talking straight up helping a TV show on set by handing them food or teaching a wannabe greaser how to sound tough. It's pathetic how lame these little side quests are.
The game doesn't always tell you where to go. For the main story it mostly does or the hints are easy enough to figure out. The side quests though can often leave you stumped on what to do next and from what I can tell, there isn't a traditional quest log either. So you can't focus on a specific side quest as far as I can tell.

I would argue the pros far outweigh the cons easy. Fun game, worth it overall for the phenomenal story!
Posted 1 December, 2024.
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10 people found this review helpful
63.3 hrs on record
Pros:
Runs extremely smooth. I suffered no lagginess or frame drops. This is one well optimized game engine.
As usual, there is some good voice acting (though not as good as the ME trilogy) and some decent storytelling. The characters are fun to get to know and the unique quests for them are just as in-depth as they were in the trilogy.
Awesome sound effects much like the previous games and the music is perfect for the theme.
I love that there is an option for the main character's father to have similar traits such that he looks like he would be your character's actual father.
You can 'track' quests and have it actually tell you where to go. ME3 had a bad issue in which they didn't show you where to go but also didn't provide enough info in the journal so it was sometimes impossible without using an internet guide to figure out what I needed to be doing.
Well designed levels/maps. There is plenty of detail and clutter to make them feel lifelike (well, for a scifi). They also make terrific use of lighting/shadows.
They added a jump feature however it is a rocket boost type of thing which is a bit hard to get used to. Still makes exploring a bit more diverse though as you can access areas that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Cons:
The aforementioned rocket boost jump thing is insanely annoying...useful but annoying.
Still can't crouch. Haven't been able to do that since the first game and I much prefer manual crouching to this automated take cover silliness. In fact, there are less areas scattered about to take cover behind so sometimes you'll get caught out in the open and get easily obliterated. Or the only things nearby are oddly shaped and the auto-take cover doesn't work.
Character movement is slow and sluggish, every tiny rock slows you down to a crawl and movement speed seems synced to the animations which are molasses slow.
Custom first name has a character limit which I didn't notice so my intended first name was 1 letter short. The trilogy didn't have this issue with that same name.
Sometimes the mouse cursor will randomly appear in the middle of the screen. It will eventually go away but come back on its own, or you can do a quick alt-tab to make it disappear for a while. This was extremely frequent when going in and out of menus.
Sometimes when the camera zooms in for dialogue, the screen will start flickering/flashing.
The mouth doesn't always sync with the voices though it isn't too bad or too often.
The paragon/renegade system is gone however you can still occasionally interact during dialogue though it seems extremely rare.
I recall significantly less choices in this game than in the trilogy. It seems like there is less of you impacting the story in significant ways.
You can no longer control your team's powers. Weird they removed that since it was always a staple of the series.
Remember how the original game had mobile health kits and they got rid of that in favor of regenerating health for ME2? Well this one has neither. It's either find a health 'station' or die.
There's a bug when using an augmentation on certain weapons that causes them to fire endlessly unless you holster the weapon or run out of ammo. How did that make it past QA and still not get fixed after the fact?
This game falls for the modern open world disease...there is a very high quantity of very low quality quests. You'll spend inordinate amounts of time running around collecting a lot of nonsense.
Dialogue is very cheesy and lame. Once or twice would be one thing but it is very often.
My favorite power from the trilogy where you can go into a slow-mo state appears to be gone.
Audio frequently cuts off during dialogue with lines not finishing or something else cutting the dialogue off so you miss things.

Overall:
The game starts off great, the intro being very entertaining and the idea of going to another galaxy highly intriguing. The sense of wonder when you go to your first alien world is incredible. The first alien race you encounter is well done as you can't understand them so there is a true sense of mystery. Your AI helps you gather data to slowly begin translating their text but then all the sudden you encounter a second race and boom, just like that, everyone understands everyone perfectly and you're just another alien race they associate with as though you weren't from another galaxy. From that point on, there was very little mystery and a surprising amount of existing settlements. It really sucked the fun right out of the game for me as it went from mysterious to just another open world grind to 'find all the things' way too suddenly.
The story was decent at best. It had its moments but overall it wasn't as good as any of the ME trilogy to me and it had the most anti-climactic ending yet. There were enough cons above that I almost didn't recommend this but it is still a decent experience overall and worth it on sale.
Posted 22 September, 2024.
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103.5 hrs on record
~ME1~
Pros:
Good remaster overall. Performs fine at max settings on my 1440p ultrawide. Minor stuttering in the vehicle at times but wasn't that bad.
Awesome voice acting with some recognizable actors. The female Shepard was perfect, tough and no-nonsense, which really fits the character.
Music was nice too for the theme of the game. Sound effects were pretty good.
Nice storytelling. I enjoyed the dialogue and the intensity of the story presentation as well as the ending.

Cons:
Terrible face sculpting, many characters have a permanent look of surprise. Game is showing its age but even some older games had better character design.
There are some idle animations to keep things lively but for the most part, everyone stands around with the same stiff/rigid demeanor.
Not a great shooter. There is no ammo management as all guns have magical infinite ammo and instead you manage their heat levels.
All bodies magically disappear when killed. Presumably because this was a console title.
Also related to this being a console game first...this has a horrific UI with little to no information being presented on screen at any one time.
Awful AI, the melee opponents often run in circles. Enemies with guns will run right up to your crew and stand in the middle of everyone while trying to shoot you point blank. Allies will run in front of you constantly. If you order them to go to a position, sometimes they do it, sometimes they don't, and they never stay there long.
Level design is very boring. Just your basic empty hallways, copy/pasted rooms with minimal detail/clutter.
Vehicle controls are abhorrent. Press W to move forward but if you look behind you then W goes backwards? Makes no sense.
Character can't sprint for more than about 2-3 seconds.
Audio sliders only affect the gameplay so the cutscenes were WAY louder than I wanted.
Looter shooter where you constantly pick up 100 different weapons to replace that of yours and the crew.

Overall not a bad game but definitely not a great one. On its own, I would still recommend it for the story alone.

~ME2~
Pros:
Massive improvements overall. Better face sculpting, ammunition in favor of heat mgmt, improved AI, significantly better level design, terrific sound effects and voice acting as well as storytelling. The story is vastly more entertaining the way you go around recruiting your crew. The intricacy of the characters and how each has their own unique side quests really makes the game shine.
You can import your save so your character looks the same and all decisions made in the previous game are part of the sequel.
No longer a looter shooter as you have specific weapons and instead focus on upgrading them instead of replacing them.
Depending on paragon/renegade levels, you can interrupt others during dialogue and change the outcome of a scene. This is actually really interesting and fun, I wish more games did this.
With more character involvement and backstory, you really see how unique each alien race is in terms of their speech patterns and culture etc.

Cons:
Still terrible at sprinting, awful UI, they replaced the vehicle with a hovercraft thing that you platform with which is arcadey and doesn't belong.
Bodies still disappear and while they did add ammo mgmt, all the small caliber weapons use the same ammo which is fully replenished when picking up ammo.
They did away with crouching and using grenades for some reason

Overall an amazing game and one of the better RPGs I've played. Worth it for the story alone but the gameplay is vastly improved too.

~ME3~
Pros:
They added grenades back in and this time they are traditional throwables which is nice.
You can sprint forever!
Still has a great story and quality voice acting. I was literally in tears at the end. I truly enjoyed this experience.

Cons:
The dialogue seems a bit silly and even cringy at times. It is slightly less 'serious' than the first 2 games when doing side quests. Also, WAY TOO MUCH TIME is spent doing 'shore leave' stuff which takes away from the intensity of how serious the situation is in this story.
Can no longer holster a weapon. When you are in a combat area, you are constantly running around with weapon drawn and stuck in a tightly narrowed FOV.
The journal is much worse, there is less info and it rarely tells you where to go or what step you are at within the quest. You could have the item you need to fetch and not even know it. You might know you need to return an item to the Citadel but you'll have zero indication of which floor to go to.
No more probing planets for materials or minigames for hacking/bypass - this may be a Pro to some but a Con for others. Instead you probe a planet to acquire an item for a fetch quest and don't even leave the ship. I can understand removing hacking/bypass minigames for doors you NEED to go through, but removing them from things that would just grant you credits is just making it needlessly easy.

Overall not as good as ME2 on the whole but but still an awesome game with a spectacular set of endings. I loved it at the end and was genuinely in tears.

As a trilogy, I highly recommend it. This is a great series and I'm happy I finally got into it!
Posted 3 September, 2024.
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0.3 hrs on record
Terrific game, massive improvement over the first one. There were some questionable changes such as removing grenades and taking away the ability to crouch. But those are minor. The spectacular storytelling and depth of involvement with the individual characters makes this one of the better RPGs I've played.
I played and completed the game on the Legendary edition so I'll write a more detailed review there when I finish the 3rd game.
Posted 26 August, 2024.
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1 person found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
0.4 hrs on record
Seems pretty promising.
Too many people are 'comparing' to the Sims which is unfair since the latter was in development like 10 years ago.
With that said, this one will likely destroy the Sims for people who like to make characters. The gameplay remains up in the air but this character creator is great and being that there will be mod support at the onset, I think this has a bright future.

Some cons: the performance seems quite bad so far. My machine is very strong and we're dealing with just a single character standing in empty space. There are no AI programs running, no large environments or other characters on screen. For it to run so sluggish, I fear for the full game. They can and will likely improve as they optimize it upon and right after release though so we'll see how it goes.
Posted 25 August, 2024.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
6.0 hrs on record
OF NOTE: I actually didn't finish this game originally. I later went back and played the remastered version and finally completed it there. I don't know for certain which parts of my review for that game would apply to this since it has been ages since I tried this old one out. Long story short, if Steam had a neutral option then this would go there. I didn't love the game but I also didn't dislike it either. It is very much a console game so as a long time PC player, I feel that the game is very simplified and has an abhorrent UI. I won't get into all the details since like I said, not sure a lot of it applies to the original version but suffice to say, the story is cool and the voice acting is awesome. Since there is no neutral option, I lean more towards recommending this title. The remastered version goes on sale real cheap and includes the first 3 games so that's a great 'bang-for-your-buck' value right there.
Posted 12 August, 2024.
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1 person found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
2.8 hrs on record
Pros:
While it isn't made by the same dev team as the first two games, it is still largely the same arcadey action adventure you can expect from those so it has the same look and feel.
I found the story interesting from what I saw of it. It is a nice touch, being able to see what the villains were up to.

Cons:
The game is spent entirely on a planetary moon so you have to constantly deal with your oxygen levels (not a huge deal since they make that easy to replenish) and low gravity. The low grav part is extremely frustrating. Enemies will move about side to side and jump all the sudden so they go flying into the air super fast and are coming at you from above at all angles. This would normally be a good thing that enemies are hard to hit but in this game it is often you against 50 and all of them bum rush you at once.
The Borderlands games don't have a difficulty selector. The first 2 games could be played solo and the difficulty would presumably scale up as other players join you. I don't like to play games with others so I prefer solo. This game seems like it was designed specifically to be played with a group as you will CONSTANTLY get swarmed with massive numbers of enemies that are all hard to hit and each one is a bullet sponge. The first boss will take down even your best shield in seconds and then you just get gang banged until you die repeatedly. When you add low gravity into it, it just makes it that much harder.
Posted 3 August, 2024.
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2 people found this review helpful
6.2 hrs on record
Pros:
Somewhat decent story with some good voice acting,
There are choices that shape the narrative a little.

Cons:
EXTREMELY short. Takes like 4 hours to finish the game and it felt very underwhelming at the end.
The ending I got left the game really feeling like a huge time sink. It started shaping up to something that seemed bigger and more climactic but then it just falls flat on its face and ends.
Posted 2 August, 2024.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
2.0 hrs on record
Pros:
The look and feel is spot on for a Terminator film so the devs get an A+ for that.
Well optimized. I have everything at max settings and it is performing beautifully with no hitches, frame drops, stutters etc.
Works perfectly fine on ultrawide. FOV is adjustable.
Dialogue has occasional choices which note off to the side that choices matter. From what I've seen of the story, it isn't bad.
Has a pretty good looking skill upgrade system for your character.

Cons:
No manual saves. No quicksaves. Just stupid checkpoints you manually activate by finding random computers that still somehow have power.
Sound effects are poor. The ambient sounds in the background are fine but everything else like weapons and such, sounds mediocre at best.
Voice acting isn't the best. It isn't BAD, just not good enough to put it under the pros column.
Zoom FOV is insane. You can hold a 1911 with iron sights and it zooms as though you have a 4x tactical optic on it. It's great for longer range engagements but when an enemy gets close I can hardly see them.
The lockpicking. It is the style you see in games like Skyrim, Fallout and Dying Light. I like that style HOWEVER, this one is extremely flimsy and cheap feeling. The rotation speed is too fast and the sound effects are poor so it just doesn't "feel" right.
The stealth doesn't seem to work very well. There is a bar which shows how 'seen' you are but they basically see you almost immediately so there isn't much of a point to the bar. Once you're seen, like 90% of the time they've got you so you gotta get to shooting. This can be upgraded but still...

Overall - This is not a BAD game. It deserves more of a neutral option but since Steam doesn't have that and I think it has enough redeeming qualities, I lean more towards positive.
Basically, this is a looter shooter of sorts but in a post-apocalyptic Terminator cinematic world. You can play your way, stealthy or guns blazing and roam until your little heart is content. If that sounds interesting to you then check it out.
Posted 28 July, 2024.
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Showing 1-10 of 431 entries