Скорошни рецензии на Eric Wake

A Worthy Successor to One of the Greatest Games of All Time

It's not often that you get sequels worthy of their pedigree, but Deus Ex Human Revolution definitely lives up to its legendary predecessor.

This game slaps. Forget Cyberbunk 2069 or whatever. Deus Ex is where the REAL cyberpunk action is.

Human Revolution really nails the cyberpunk aesthetic too. You're really living in a gritty, run down cyberpunk future. The environmental graphics are top notch even for their time. The presentation is ace, with every corner laden with juicy little visual details.

The character graphics, on the other hand, run the gamut from decent to absolutely dismal. Faces either look like something from the year Human Revolution released to something from out of the first Deus Ex game. Lip syncing even has the flappy jaw syndrome from back in 2001. Body animations and gestures are stiff and robotic to a somewhat comical degree. This can make the game's abundant conversations somewhat silly at times, but it's not so jarring as to completely break the mood.

Level design is top of its class. Like its predecessor, Human Revolution features sprawling levels laden with secret rooms and hidden paths, tons of interactivity with computers, terminals, security cams, robots and even walls. The variety in the level design coupled with your extensive augmentation loadout offer up no end of creative approaches towards objectives.

Performance wise the game is decent, but the way the game loads assets causes major stuttering upon loading saves or when entering new areas. The stuttering only lasts a few seconds until the off screen assets load in, but it is rather jarring and at least a little obnoxious. Poor optimization, it would seem. But it's somewhat forgivable.

Weapon variety is a little thin by comparison, however. There are really only two good weapons in the game and the standard handgun's damage and versatility makes it far ahead the best weapon in the game. The combat rifle's homing bullet upgrade makes it an easy boss killer since most bosses like to run around quickly while stealthed. My beloved crossbow from the first game is painfully unimpressive in HR. And heavy weapons are pretty redundant when the only thing tough enough to use them on are mechs which can be defeated with a single EMP grenade anyway.

So not the best weapon loadout ever but then again HR isn't a run and gun shooter. It's a stealth action/cover based shooter with aiming and movement controls that are smooth as glass. Contextual controls are always responsive and menus are exceptionally well designed.

The story of Human Revolution perfectly nails the Deus Ex series' penchant for conspiracy laden intrigue, the evils of world governments, secret societies controlling world events, exploitative pharmaceutical companies making people sick so they can sell them the cure, manipulative mass media, greedy tech companies, banks taking advantage of everyone... you know, like our world only without the cool human cybernetic augmentations.

It's a riveting, suspenseful narrative that hits all the right notes and stands as a firm entry in the greater cyberpunk genre.

Play it.

Game cannot survive its absolutely TRASH combat.

Oh My GOD this is bad. I mean. Jesus front flipping Christ this is utterly horrendous combat.

Stiff. Unresponsive. Spastic. Controls are AWFUL. Absolutely GOD AWFUL.

This is by far the worst melee combat I have ever played in my life.

Blocking? Useless. Dodging? Useless. WHAT? You have to be in a specific stance to dodge??? WHAT? You have to be in another specific stance to PICK STUFF UP??? Oh, and you have to double tap the stance switch controls because the first button press never registers.

You hit a full second after button input. You dodge a full second after button input. Enemies ♥♥♥♥♥ kick you in the butt, don't telegraph their attacks, and there is no way to counter. Did you want to do something as simple as TURN AROUND? NO! Enemy just ♥♥♥♥♥ kicked you in the butt for free just for thinking about it! Your character also ignored the directional input telling him to do so, FOUR TIMES!

Did you want to pick up that huge ass sofa? You know? The one that's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!! NO! You're grabbing thin air instead! Either that or you're grabbing one of the half dozen enemies crowding you and now you're locked into a grapple while enemies get free hits in all around.

Oh! But don't think that means that you can have your way with the enemy you're grabbing no. You'll spam every face button on the controller seven times before your character is done staring longingly into their soul like a f-ggit and finally does something.

Oh? And what's this I see happening? Why, it's a SURPRISE QUICK TIME EVENT! Oh My GOD It's 2014!!! And when you fail it you lose half your health. Because F- you!

The game even has the audacity to offer to lower the difficulty for you. As if it's YOUR FAULT that it sucks so hard. And of course, when you do, it becomes laughably easy. Like, a complete pushover. Pathetic. No fun. No challenge. It's still the same old sloppy ret@arded jank fest only now even bosses are such pushovers that you can spastically flail around at them and win.

Look. Sleeping Dogs already got this right. Everything Yakuza 0 does, Sleeping Dogs does only correctly. Yakuza 0 FAILS at THE BASICS of brawler combat. Utterly, completely, FAILS at even basic controls, response time, collision detection, contextual commands, directional facing.

At no time have I felt even remotely in control of combat. There is no way to manage the flow. No way to position yourself amongst enemies. No way to crowd control. Sleeping Dogs, Batman: Arkham, Mad Max, Shadows of Mordor... every game allows you full control over the flow of combat. The better you're doing, the more you're setting enemies up for takedown, keeping dangerous ones at a distance, defending your sides and rear, and effortlessly countering their attacks.

There is none of that here. Just slip-shod, haphazard flailing around like a tard.

I am in the first major combat segment in the game. This is it. The very introduction to the game's combat and I am already utterly BEWILDERED at how HARD they've managed to ♥♥♥♥ this up. It's astonishing. I had no idea it was even possible to FAIL this hard.

If this is what passes for brawler combat to people, then I don't know what brand of crack they're smoking. This is complete and utter trash.

Is TO:R a bad game on its own? No. But there are plenty of better turn based tactics games you could be playing.

Unit positioning means practically nothing in TO:R. Good tbt games let you make optimal use of things like elevation, flanking and choke points. And while these strategies do exist in TO:R along with mechanics such as to-hit advantages for back attacks or attacks from elevation, there just isn't really ever any need to make use of them. The only real concern in this regard is that ranged attacks need line of sight to their target, which just means that your own units routinely block attempts at making ranged attacks on enemies.

Map design also does not facilitate creative maneuvers. Yes there are obvious choke points and elevated areas and maps are often purposely designed to give either you or the enemy a height advantage simply by making the entire map slope up or down. The problem is the size of the maps coupled with the stupidly small movement range of most units makes just getting to these areas a chore. In fact, despite the uselessly large size of the maps, engagements only ever take place in a small part of them. This is because unit movement range is so small, but ranged attacks cover much wider areas. The most annoying affect this has is that the first 20 or more moves in every level are just inching your units towards the enemy units on the other side of the map painstakingly slowly, without any methodology other than simply moving from the obvious point a to point b while having to wait for the computer to do the same. And they all end up meeting in some predetermined midway point on the map anyway.

There also isn't much in the way of unit synergy. Sure you've got your front liners and your support casters and ranged attackers, etc. But none of them ever really work together other than the obvious healers. Front line units have an ability to block enemy movement but this can just be ignored under certain circumstances. Casters may have their typical crowd control abilities that come in handy but most fights just boil down to do more damage to the enemy than they do to you just by trying to keep your squishy units from being attacked.

Battles will be made significantly harder if you're not at the max allowable level at the time. The game has hard level caps. It doles out 3-4 levels you can gain every few missions. This arbitrarily keeps your forces on par with the current difficulty. But if you're not maxed out for the current engagement, you will get wiped and no amount of clever tactics can prevent that when the enemy just has a flat statistical advantage. This requires you to train over half a dozen times between story missions which is just needless grind.

The story is lackluster. There is a lot going on but very little context given for anything. As such it is very difficult to really care about anything. The story branches in places which only just changes up the characters you can acquire which doesn't really matter because it has no bearing on the story and you can just buy units anyway. And I don't know why the game has an overworld map because it amounts to nothing more than a mission select screen. You won't be moving forces around a strategic map to claim territories and resources. It's just there for you to select missions and shop.

The voice acting, however, is exceptional and is the only thing that made me care about the characters at all.

The game also has an irritating insistence on making you play with ai controlled ally units. WHY??? I've suffered dumber computer controlled friendlies in games but you still can't keep these from an heroing themselves. There's also no point to it. Why not just let them be player controlled units???

In the end, TO:R offers very little strategy for the amount of irritations it has. A lackluster story and characters doesn't help pick up the slack either. There are no shortage of turn based strategy games to play and plenty of them are superior to this.

First of all it might be worth noting that I am a life long Myst fan ever since I played the original Myst as a kid way back in 93. I anxiously awaited my chance to play Riven for years because my family didn't have a computer that could run it and by the time we did Riven was almost impossible to find at retail. I was elated when my uncle gifted me the 5 CD set at a family reunion (I still have it).

I've played Mysts 3, IV, 5, and every version of Uru there is except for the original beta and Gametap runs. I used to be active in the Myst Online community and forums.

So it would stand to reason that I would be eager to play... Myst. I suppose, hereby referred to as Myst 2022, or just Myst 22.

Secondly, it is worth mentioning that Myst 22 is easily the prettiest version of Myst to date. Aesthetically speaking, realMyst might be close, but even though realMyst's visuals hold up today it still has the textures and polygon count of its time.

realMyst Masterpiece is, without a doubt, the worst looking of the versions with its glossy textures and lighting that makes everything look like a cheap Fisher Price playset.

As such, this review will be making comparisons to the OG Myst with occasional references to realMyst when it comes to visuals.

Also keep in mind that I have not played in VR so nothing in this review reflects on the VR experience.

Gameplay wise, Myst 22 is relatively unchanged from its predecessors. Gone is the useless flashlight from realMyst Masterpiece. But the in game camera remains which is helpful in recording clues for easy reference. I do lament, however, that like previous versions of Myst, Myst 22 does not come with a journal included :P

WASD for movement. Mouselook. Pretty standard. There is no option to rebind keys, however. Which is unacceptable for a game released in the current year.

There is an option now to randomize puzzles. This is a feature that would only make a difference to veteran Myst players. Because what it does is just randomize the codes you get for people who know them from memory. The process of solving the puzzles are still all the same. So if you already know the solutions, you'd only do this if you wanted to go through all the puzzles step by step to get the codes... which you can just choose to do anyway.

Since the core Myst experience remains relatively unchanged, the biggest difference will be in the graphical department. And boy what a difference there is, for good and ill.

Here is where I begin to nitpick a little.

But first, it is worth mentioning that technically speaking, Myst 22 looks great. Good lighting. Good textures... decent enough animations. All good. And it runs smooth as silk. Overall, a worthwhile improvement over previous versions.

There are caveats, however.

Some texture map still images are used in certain places where their presence is pretty obvious. The views from the tower, for instance, are very obviously 2D backdrops. The water isn't moving in them, for one thing. And their resolution is jarringly low. The viewfinder of the telescope on Stoneship is also very obviously a scrolling 2D image that stands out pretty jarringly from the surroundings. In the latter case, the problem isn't that it's a texture. The problem is that it is an obvious texture.

The skyboxes of each age also leave much to be desired. They are very obvious texture map skyboxes with copy pasted low res clouds that just rotate around the level. Some of the age's skylines are enhanced by some decent lighting, but there are certainly better skyline effects in current year games. Myst 22 skyboxes resemble games from 2002.

Now here's where the nitpicking really begins.

There are some... artistic licenses... that don't jive well with me personally. They also raise the question as to why they were necessary in the first place.

Some elements of the visuals have been re-imagined, particularly on the iconic Myst Island itself. The gearbox controls for setting the time on the clock used to be this little box with red valve wheels that really lent to the retro steampunk aesthetic, Now the controls for the clock is this strangely shaped dias with crank levers on top that just stands out like a sore thumb in the surrounding environment. The ornament on top of the clock used to be this elegant crescent moon and arrow. A nice lovely feature. Now somebody went and added gear teeth to the moon so as to fit with the gear aesthetic, as if the entire clock having been built atop a giant gear didn't set the theme hard enough. This change just makes the scene look somewhat gaudy.

The library is fraught with such alterations. The picture frames are mechanical levers now... for no conceivable reason. Okay. At least they still do that neat swirly effect when you pull on them. There is a bizarre looking mantle over the fireplace that wasn't there before. And the control panel inside the fireplace used to be this really neat matte gray surface that would expand into squares with a nifty sound effect when you touched them. It was like it was made of some liquid mercury like substance that responded to touch. Very clever. Now it's just a panel of mechanical buttons that light up when you press them. Pretty lame.

But by far the most egregious example is the library bookshelf, the focal point of the room. In previous versions, the bookshelf was this elegant, thee tiered shelf built into the wall, the shelves of which spanned the length of the alcove and were filled with all the burned books and journals.

Now, the "shelf" is just three cubby holes in a flat wooden surface with far less books than there were before and the texture mapping for those books looks horrible. Absolutely horrendous. They look like globs of unset malformed clay. I don't know how else to describe it.

This shelf isn't just a focal point of the room. It's a focal point of the story. This is where the tragedy took place. The scene of the crime. All those books represent unmitigated loss and untold tragedy for countless people. To see it reduced to three cubby holes with some visually indistinct grey blobs in them is almost as tragic.

This begs the question. Why were these changes necessary? What was the motivation behind them? Why were they done without any regards to aesthetic or their relation to the story?

This is like what George Lucas did over and over again with his Star Wars movies, adding little changes here and there that actually amounted to pretty significant things. The infamous Han Shot First, or even replacing the original Anakin force ghost with Hayden Christensen just for the sake of continuity.

Nobody asked for these things and they have a bigger impact than one might expect. Artistic license is all well and good but when you're dealing with a remake it's probably best to just stick with how things have been.

It's not all bad though. Some of the artistic choices really lend to the experience. One example is the oil slick under the mechanical age. A visual detail seemingly of no consequence but which really adds to the aesthetic if you really think about it.

The controls surrounding the basin in the pillar walkway now light up at the touch of a turn dial and have the appearance of olde timey filament which I think suits the mechanical steampunk aesthetic better than the icons in the original that would light up when you moused over them and turn green when you clicked on em.

The visual designers also did away with the open book icons around the exterior of the library that were in previous versions which I always thought looked fairly tacky.

Another small caveat, but there are also no day night cycles or weather effects anymore. They have been replaced with the aforementioned skyboxes, but with more artistically informed lighting and ambiance than weather effects can provide.

So will I recommend this version of Myst? Yes. Unequivocally. Questionable artistic liberties aside, it's more Myst, if you want it.

Allow me to suggest a better game to play than Baldur's Gate 3.

Here's how to play.

1.) Roll a dice.

2.) If the result of your roll is in the upper half of the dice's range, punch yourself in the ♥♥♥♥.

3.) Next, sit there doing nothing for 30 seconds to a minute.

4.) If the result of your roll is in the lower half of the dice's range, roll again.

Repeat as many times as you like.

The biggest advantage my game has over BG3 is it's completely free.

But just like BG3, my game has no winners. Only losers.

Readers of this review may wonder how a player with so many hours of recorded playtime can issue a warning of "Not Recommended" for Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I can see this half arsed MMO appealing to certain players and not others. The reason why is because as an MMO, you can do better. And as a single player RPG, you can do better. SWtOR tries to do both, and ends up being less of either.

Had Bioware simply gone and made Knight of the Old Republic 3 like everyone wanted, the world would have enjoyed another of the greatest RPG adventures of all time. But noooooo. There's no $$$ in pushing out a single high quality product with artistic vision and feeling satisfied with oneself. And EA just has to have their endless revenue stream.

So... enter the cash-cow that is The Old Republic. It's the MMO without the multiplayer but with the watered down single player story of a budget RPG. Oh sure, SWtOR's narrative is plenty cinematic, but dialog has been reduced to 3 choices with no ability to affect the narrative and no opportunity for roleplay.

Meanwhile, you'll catch glimpses of other players in passing but you'll never actually work with them, play with or against them, or interact with them in any way if you don't want to. You'll certainly never have to. Yes, there are multiplayer modes, PVP, cooperative PVE... and as fun as many of them can be, they're all ultimately optional to the story.

For its part, the story is fully voiced, fully animated, and cinematic. There are no text boxes to click through but most cutscenes tend to drag on. It's rather funny how at many points the story tries to get all dramatic and convey a sense of urgency that you'll never feel because you know the tricks of the game will never actually let you fail at anything. So there's this constant narrative dissonance throughout, where the story's script clashes with the usual MMO gameplay trappings. It's yet another example of the MMO and the story driven RPG not getting along.

Speaking of difficulty, SWtOR has none. You can be over leveled within a few hours of play. Companions are only ever good for healing and if you just keep them set to heal you will pretty much never be at risk of dying. Not that dying matters much. Just reset and pay an insignificant fee to repair your equipment if you want and be on your way. The worst you'll suffer is having to walk back to where you were.

SWtOR's combat is ripped straight out of World of Warcraft. Actually, SWtOR is pretty much just World of Warcraft dressed up to look like Star Wars. EA didn't say Bioware had to be creative when setting up their cash cow, so why not rip off WoW? Everybody else did. The combat is the now antiquated tab target style with your 15+ abilities all spread out across an array of quick bars. You'd think all those abilities would lend a lot of variety to the combat, but no. You have your rotation and you'll stick with it - mindlessly clicking the icons in the same order as they change colors like a slow motion game of Simon Says.

In terms of presentation, SWtOR is definitely showing its age. It wasn't exactly the most beautiful game when it released. The graphics look cartoony and cheap. Everything has a cheap plastic look as if the whole universe were a fischer price playset. For as cheap as it looks, it can suffer some performance issues at the highest settings. A game this old shouldn't be testing the limits of modern hardware. That's bad optimization.

And since the only reason for this game to exist is to make EA $$$, we gotta talk about the payment model. It's EA so make sure to lube up. It's "free" by the strictest definition of the word, but EA will irritate and cripple you by removing basic convenience features if you don't pay. Even after you've paid, you'll be met with paywall after paywall for ♥♥♥♥ you can either grind for or pay up front to have now. Play SWtOR like you're on a trip to Disney World, because you'll have your wallet out at all times.

So why have I put so many hours into it? Because the game is simple and at this particular moment, I want to do something in my spare time without having to think about it too much. That's good for now, but what happens when I get bored or finally want to play something more taxing again? It's definitely not worth all the $$$ I put into it. It is not fun or engaging enough. It's a half assed RPG in a half assed MMO. For that, I can't recommend SWtOR to the general gaming public. There are better MMOs to spend your time and money on. And there are better single player story driven RPGs you could be playing.

It's B!tchwork: The Game

You're a b!tch.

You do work.

That's how Mount and Blade: Warband is played.

You grind. And grind. And grind. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

Every once in a while, the game screws you over. You take a loss, maybe even a significant loss to undo the hours of "progress" you've previously made.

It certainly doesn't help that finding things to do is a massive pain in the @$$. Quest givers move around the map constantly and are even taken out of play frequently. Quests are random. Some are easy and pay well. Some are needlessly difficult and pay $h!t. But you won't know until you ask someone to do more b!tchwork for them.

Then, when you're done with your b!tchwork, you have to go find the quest giver again. He could be across the map, or currently an enemy prisoner. Who knows? But good luck finding him. And if the time limit on your quest expires before you do? Well... sucks to be a b!tch.

Everything else you can do is completely random and pretty much entirely dependent on whatever's happening next to you on the map.

Combat is rough and janky. AI pathfinding is silly. Controls are ridiculous.

You could be playing a million other games, so why waste your time with Mount and Blade?

If you're really that desperate to do bitchwork, ask the local 7-11 if you can clean their bathrooms. Or pick up the dog $h!t in the park. Pull some weeds out of your neighbor's yard, or whatever.

I've always heard it said how addicting this game is. Boy, they ain't lying. Civilization V is fully aware of how addicting it is. You'll be begging for one more turn like a crack addict begging for one more fix.

Civilization V is deep. Like, deeper than yo momma's p**y deep. There are so many ways to play and so many ways to win and so many ways to lose it's mind boggling. From the plethora of civilizations to play as and against, to the number of victory conditions and the sheer number of ways to get there, to the sheer number of map compositions and ways to set up a match, you could play a hundred games and no two would seem even remotely alike. The sheer immense wonder of being able to simulate your civilization's rise through the ages offers up endless possibilities.

And don't think the game will let you catch any slack either. Civ V has one of the most advanced opponent AI I've ever seen in a video game. On the basic difficulty settings, the AI is a pushover. It will mostly cooperate with you and only become distant if you start warmongering. It will seldom outright attack you. The worst you'll ever have to contend with is it making a play to conquer a city state that you're particularly fond of (or one you want to conquer yourself). If you pick a fight with another civilization, however, they're easily beaten.

But once you start ramping up the difficulty settings... watch out. The opponent AI becomes absolutely merciless. It will eat your lunch and then eat you for lunch. It's smart. Scary smart. It's like, how in the world hasn't it already conquered the real world yet smart. The sheer number of ways in which the AI will kick your @$$ is astounding. Fortunately for you, you have all of the same methods at your disposal. So you only have yourself to blame for your civilization being stomped by the AI and brushed aside into the dustbin of history.

So if you're more than up for the challenge, the computer is more than up to give it to you.

But if you'd rather match wits against a more human opponent, multiplayer has you covered. It's as comprehensive a multiplayer as you can get, with every player manning their civilization on the same map with or without AI to play against.

Graphically, the game looks decent. Good for its time and it holds up well enough compared to today. I wouldn't say that Civ V couldn't stand to have a HD facelift, with better lighting and textures. The lighting effect options are disabled for me, however, for some reason.

Another odd thing the game does is minimize itself when I delete saved games. This is the only time it does it. The confirmation window pops up for a second before it minimizes, but when I open the game window again, it's gone. Strange behavior. But not really a problem. The game doesn't crash and the files are deleted as intended. It's just weird.

In all my 60 hours of play as of this review, I've only had one crash... or something like it. The game didn't really crash. It didn't even hang. The screen just went completely black and everything stopped responding. Everything. Ctrl Alt Del wouldn't register. At first I thought it was a problem with my monitor but I checked and that wasn't the case. Nothing that a simple restart couldn't handle. But it was an odd occurrence, and so far the only time it has happened. I can't even really confirm if the game was to fault.

Other than that, my only real complaint is how the camera jumps around the map to automatically center on each city and unit as its turn comes up. I'm not overly prone to motion sickness but I'm as vulnerable to it as anyone, and the constant shifting makes me ill after hours of play. It would be nice if there were an option to disable this behavior. In general, it would be nice to have a lot of options for a lot of things. But the options menu is fairly scant.

I also wish that the camera could zoom in closer. There is a lot of rich detail in the units and terrain. Watching your cities change with unique visual features as you add new buildings and wonders and advance through the ages is satisfying. But you can't zoom the camera in close enough to really appreciate it.

Pros
+More Addicting Than Crack
+Deep Deep Super Insanely Mindboggelingly Deep Mechanically Rich Gameplay
+Multiplayer Multiplayer Multiplayer
+Crazy Sophisticated Opponent AI
+Stable, Game Runs Great. I Only Had One Bizarre "Crash" But It Otherwise Runs Like A Dream
+Graphics Hold Up Well, Nice Little Artistic Details Here And There

Cons
-Camera Jumping Will Give Even The Most Hardened Fighter Pilot A Migraine
-Less Options In The Options Menu Than I Would Like
-Lighting Options Are Disabled For Some Reason (May Not Affect Everyone)
-Would Be Nice If The Camera Could Zoom In Closer

Overall, Civilization V is a game for the ages. If you're even remotely interested in 4X, strategy, board games, or anything similar, Civ V is the game to play.

It's a dull game and an insipid RPG.

It's an old game, complete with archaic nonsense that old games are known for. Mouse look? What's that? You get tank controls instead. Turning your character is done with the keyboard... slowly. Very slowly. So slowly that you'd think it was deliberate. You drive your guy more like a car than a person. Rebinding keys doesn't rebind them for menus.

Combat is clunky af. The designers clearly know that they left your ass hanging out in combat, which is why they programmed enemies to get behind you. Since it takes forever just to turn around, enemies can easily get three or four hits in before you can even turn to face them. If you tell your guy to draw a weapon... he might... eventually... the fourth or fifth time. Dude attacks in starts and fits. He might swing his sword when you tell him to... or he might stand there contemplating life and the nature of reality. He'll snap target whatever enemy is closest, but since enemies are so spastic he'll just keep switching targets the entire fight. You have no control over this. Enemies are way faster than his dumb tanky ass, so every fight is just mashing melee at whatever keeps passing close enough to hit, hoping he attacks at all, while getting poked in the butt the whole time by whatever enemy has slipped behind you.

Oh, and notice how I keep calling the PC "your guy." Well, that's because he doesn't have a name. Or he might as well not. He's a plank. And his VO is so cringingly bad. The dialog in this game is painfully awkward. You can't customize him. There aren't even any head swaps. He's a total dork. Who do you want to play in an RPG? A fierce fighter? A wise cleric? A stoic monk? A dashing bard? A clever rogue? Forget it. You get Mr. Plank.

And what sort of adventures would you like to go on with Mr. Plank? Rescuing princesses? Raiding the dark lords tower? Harrowing escapes from the darkest dungeons? Slaying dragons? Venturing into untamed wilderness to search for lost treasures? Delving into lost and ancient temples full of secrets? Hunting down the sinister cult that murdered the emperor to thwart their designs to turn all the world into a living hell? Scouring all the land in the midst of a desperate war in search of your long lost adopted daughter to halt the invasion of a cavalcade of wraiths whose arrival would bring about the end of the world? Chasing a rogue agent across the galaxy to prevent the return of space Cuthulu?

Forget it! You're doing bitchwork. Because that's what Mr. Plank is. He's everyone's ♥♥♥♥♥. Your first quest has you doing farm work... for ratty farmers clothes. Next, you'll be getting a job just so you can get permission to get into an exclusive courtyard just to deliver a message. To do that, you have to perform menial tasks for the town clique just to appease them. Then you're playing fetch. A lot. Interviewing suspects and witnesses because the militia are too lazy and inept to do it themselves. Being sent cross country to... ask a question and report back. Sound like fun?

Also, this game will kick your ass from the get go. if you're not getting stymied with an endless cavalcade of dead end quests, you're getting one-shotted by every enemy in the game. You know how every RPG starts you off fighting rats and wolves? Well... G2 is no exception. Except in G2, the rats and wolves aren't starter enemies. They're level 10-15 enemies.

So you cheese it like a little ♥♥♥♥♥ for 20 hours until you've scrounged up enough experience to be able to hold a basic weapon. The game even gives you characters who will slay basic enemies for you because you're so weak, just to make sure that you feel like even more of a ♥♥♥♥♥.

Look, I'm fine with difficulty... if combat weren't such a janky wreck and you didn't have to grind measly expee for hours just to be able to hold the most basic weapons.

I'm fine with quests not just leading you by the hand to the next objective... if quests weren't all bitchwork and didn't have constant dead ends due to abrupt progress barriers.

I can put up with cringingly bad dialog... if the story weren't so asinine and the only vaguely interesting parts weren't ripped straight off of every stock standard fantasy trope ever conceived.

What I can't excuse is a voiced player character with no customization and thus no agency, with horrendously bad VO where text would have sufficed just fine.

What I can't excuse is some of the worst combat and movement controls and one of the worst user interfaces I've ever seen.

What I can't excuse is an RPG adventure with no role playing or adventure.

You Are Space Ninja

That's it. That's the review.