Recent reviews by brogonzo

This game is solid. Cool level designs, combat that feels fluid and fast, and a super cool dual-worlds mechanic that allows you to peer into the ghost realm at any time. This is what you'd get if you had Sam Raimi make Dark Souls II.

Love it so far - it feels like the fulfillment of what Dark Souls always was meant to become. Absolutely beautiful, challenging, and massive. I've only dipped my toe in so far, but it's been utterly intoxicating.

All in all, a terrific port with a few strange little omissions. You can only cap the framerate at up to 120 fps, and it lacks a true fullscreen option - you can run it either windowed or in a borderless fullscreen window.

Other than that though, performance is great - I played on the ultra preset on an RTX 2070 Super and Ryzen 9 3900X at 1440p. It's a great game, and just feels incredible as a work of craftsmanship. It's seamlessly executed.

My full review is available at PCGamesN[www.pcgamesn.com].

Awarded Deathloop a 10/10 in my review for PCGamesN[www.pcgamesn.com]. This is a masterpiece, and a game that will be talked about for years to come.

I reviewed this for PCGamesN[www.pcgamesn.com] and gave it a 5/10. There's lots to love about the setting, the comedic asides from enemies, and some of the expanded movesets you can unlock for the four pre-made characters. But make no mistake: this is a broken game that will frustrate you and waste your time.

Enemy leveling is incoherent: there's no way to tell whether a trash mob is going to fall over in a couple hits or tank tons of damage and potentially one-shot kill you. Hitboxes are nowhere near the models on screen. Gear and stat adjustments make no difference in terms of how you approach the game, which doesn't change at all over the course of 21 campaign missions + dungeons.

The levels themselves are occasionally interesting but ultimately they're all linear corridors that will sometimes stall you with a fight in a wider arena area. Most of these, it turns out, are entirely optional - you can run through straight to the end of most levels without fighting at all if you want to.

Bosses are boring - they're mostly repurposed, larger versions of the handful of enemy types you encounter ad nauseam through the rest of the missions, just granted huge health pools and additional magic attacks in some cases. Don't worry though, since they'll only occasionally take note of your presence, and at no point will they attempt to avoid any environmental hazards that might be in their area.

This is just an unfinished, broken game. If you want to play co-op, pick up Vermintide, Deep Rock Galactic, or even Outriders.

Awarded this an 8/10 in my review on PCGamesN.

Short version: The opening is slow going, but the payoff you get when you first stumble across one of the massive hordes, is fantastic. I love the characters, who are performed with a remarkable degree of nuance and warmth. A lot of the open-world stuff you do is very by-the-numbers, but the horde fights and the setting are special. It's also very good about providing direction - I've never felt 'choice paralysis' by not knowing what to prioritize, there's always some clear goal to pursue.

And it runs like a dream on PC. None of the framerate or stuttering issues reported at launch on PS4. With a 3900X + RTX 2070 Super, I've been running at around 80 fps with no noticeable drops at 1440p and the highest possible settings.

A quintessential Yakuza game, blending a TV-style crime drama with dozens of goofy side characters and storylines, a wide array of mini-games, button-mashing combat, and a vibrant setting into an experience of being in a real place full of real people. Yakuza 0 riffs on the capitalist excess of 1980s Japan and offers thoughtful reflections on what it means to have hopes and dreams and idols. It's a magnificent game, and you should play it.

Beautiful, tons of fun, and the most accessible Monster Hunter has ever been.

Terrific adaptation of the FASA boardgame of my youth to digital. BattleTech is a turn-based tactics game about piloting massive walking machines in combat, about managing a mercenary company, and long-term planning. My full review is up at StrategyGamer.com, but I'd highly recommend this to anyone interested in XCOM. BattleTech gives you a dizzying level of control over combat scenarios but manages to present it in a way that's incredibly simple to pick up and start playing. You'll start intuitively thinking about heat buildup, flanking, and beyond-LoS targeting as you play, and while the game has some text-wall tutorials to help get you going, the simplest way to learn is to get out in the field and start MechWarrioring.

Something I've found remarkable is that, despite the somewhat clunky feeling to the turn-based combat, the rules decisions are presented in such a streamlined fashion that the flow of the game manages to almost keep up with its first-person ancestors.

Definitely recommend.

Terrific fusion of Doom-style speed and gunplay with Diablo-style loot and procedural level generation, with an added dose of air dashes and double jumps. The melee is chaotic and messy, but it's damn fun -- you can really pick whatever approach to a fight that strikes your fancy, and the crazy assortment of weapons keeps things fresh. It's a bit on the short side, but the chance at playing co-op with friends means there's plenty of reason to revisit the campaign.

All that said, if Wang-related humor really gets on your nerves, you might want to give this one a miss. It'll be a shame if you do, though.