Recent reviews by Syntax

You use the nostalgia of many players for your modern games, while delivering next to nothing new creatively.
People yearn for the feeling that the older CoDs gave them, so fans put a project together out of love for their game and the fond memories they have of the time playing that game.

But that isn't listed in the balance sheet at the end of the fiscal year, is it?
And all that because you fear losing out of an opportunity to make money... Even though you make literal billions in profit.

It goes without saying that I requestes a refund.

Cease and desist this, you greedy a*******.

A neat, linear action-adventure game that, even though it suffers from some misdirections that were popular in games at that time (2013), it doesn't overstay its welcome and keeps things simple.

Wikipedia says: "Tomb Raider is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix's European subsidiary. It is the tenth title in the Tomb Raider franchise, and operates as a reboot that reconstructs the origins of Lara Croft."


Like mentioned before, this game served as a reboot and reimagines the origins of adventurer Lara Croft. I'm not going into much detail with the story, but I personally liked the direction they were going.
It's a classic tale of a planned "safe" adventure gone wrong. Lara and her Crew are on a ship, navigating through a dangerous (Bermuda)-Triangle to get to a mysterious island.
Naturally, the storm rips the ship apart and leaves the crew stranded on the island. Not long after they regroup, they notice they're not alone on this island. In fact, a cult has formed around a maniac, and the main villain of the game, Mathias.
Furthermore, there is an aspect of supernatural that plays a significant role in the story. I liked that, since it spiced things up and was generally made quite well.
What I will mention though, is that some plot-points during the story often don't make a lotta sense, or are just incredible short sighted. Characters with essential influence being killed without much fanfare leave you wondering what could've been if the potential some of those characters had was realized.
Also, some "twists" you can see coming a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mile away. Don't expect TLOU storytelling.


As mentioned before, this linear adventure game features iconic Lara Croft basics, such as climbing dangerous terrain, fighting adversaries with a decent arsenal, hunting animals and surviving falls that would leave more than just a mark.
There's a crafting system, that relies on Lara looting enemies after a fight and actively rewards exploring the environment. Just like the game itself, in concept this is simple, there is just a single crafting material that you use towards upgrading your arsenal and gear. This is smart, since the adventure here is the main focus and a crafting aspect should not take too much time to distract from rock-climbing and zip-line riding goodness. Still, the upgrades are interesting enough and encourage the player to keep upgrading Lara's gear.

Fighting adversaries can be a bit stiff at times, but it feels satisfying shooting arrows at armored enemies and seeing their armor fly off as they recoil in pain.
The cover is simple, again, but serves its purpose.

What's the worst aspect for me, is the fact that this game has some quick-time events (QTE) thrown into the mix. A popular gameplay mechanic at that time, it now has become a no-go for developers if they're serious about engaging the player.
QTEs like in this Tomb Raider, have not aged well.


For a game released in 2013, this still looks good. Sure, you can tell this is several years old, but I was able to basically max out the graphic settings on 1440p and having it run mostly smoothly and I have to give kudos to the devs for that one.
During my playthrough I have not encountered a single crash, yet a lone a game breaking bug.
Good stuff.


For what it's worth, I can only recommend this game. Even though it suffers from some shortcomings that were fine back then, but fail to hold up now, it satisfied my need for action-adventure in a Tomb Raider style sufficiently.
A fair deal on msrp, and a really good deal when on sale.

Score: 7/10

A great story driven, slow-paced and realistic FPS that knows how to tell a compelling and intriguing story.
A great journey alongside well fleshed out characters, that surpasses its predecessors not only in scope of the environments, but in aspects of gameplay mechanics as well.



The Metro Series is based on the novels of Dmitri Glukhovsky.
It is clear to me that the writers of this game took the origin of the story very seriously. You can tell that they didn't want to just insert a story into the game just because - they want the player to care about it as well. The characters themselves, as well as the dialogue alongside pretty much everything else is written so well , you can really tell that they treat their source material with outmost respect.
While Artyom is mostly silent (except for loading screen dialogue/diary entries), his role as a passive protagonist isn't as bad as I orgininally thought it was going to be. Rather than just getting told what to do by every NPC, he has moments where the plot is developed through his actions - or rather through the actions of the player.
This is outstandingly done by the "karma" system of the game, which means the story will follow a different path, depending on the players choices. You can choose whether to mercilessly kill everything that stands in your path or carefully approach the situations given by the game and respect its virtual residents however primitive you might think they are.
These choices are done not by merely pressing a button, as in "Would you like to be bad? Y/N", rather it's done through action - or even the lack thereof.
This way it doesn't just feel like Artyom defines the story that is told, but that the player is pushing the plot forwards.

In short, a beautifully told storyline with interesting characters.


Let's get to the juicy stuff. It's a FPS so naturally you'd expect a fair size of shootin' action. While that is true (and it's good shooting, we'll get to that in a bit) it's not the only thing you do and depending on how you play, might even play a rather subelemental role.
The levels that the players find themselves in are not a linear row of corridors, which was a point of criticism of the predecessors (2033, Last Light), but are big, open and fully explorable areas that differ wildly throughout the game's journey. You get the usual dark and atmospheric metro tunnels, as expected, but you'll also get desert areas, swamps, citys, forests, etc. It's a huge step up in scope when compared to the previous titles.
These levels aren't just big for the sake of being big often the case with some open world titles but are carefully crafted to

1. peak your interest by clever game design
   
2. motivate you to explore the world, a big part of the gameplay mechanics
   
3. gives you crucial freedom in deciding what aspect you'd like to tackle first - or at all

The game is a realistic apocalypse; you're not running and gunning, spamming the "E" key to pick up loot.
I played on hardcore and every mistake I made was punished accordingly.

Stood out on the open with no cover? - Shot down in seconds.
Forgot to clean my weapon and it jammed, causing me to get overrun by monsters? - That's on me.
Took too many shots and now I got no ammo? - Crafting stations are plenty, ya dummy.

Your guns are heavy and feel powerful, while avoiding pinpoint accuracy and unnecessarily big magazines. there are mag attachments to increase your mag size though, while still maintaining believability.

Doing maintenance on your guns is crucial if you don't want the aforementioned gun jamming to happen to you.
Another mechanic to further immerse you in the apocalypse.

Metro: Exodus is not without flaws though:

- While guns have a natural inaccuracy to them and it's mostly fine, sometimes you'll just get these critical misses.
Your crosshair is right on target but your knife throw still misses.
- Minor bugs here and there, such as a buggy POV driving a car. These are mostly rare and minor inconveniences though.


If you care about story, have played the previous titles, enjoy a slow paced FPS based on immersing you into the beautifully crafted world and its environments:

It's a no brainer, this game will provide many blessed game hours.

Usually, I'd go through the game contents (mechanics, storyline, etc) first before taking a look at the technical aspects but in this case, the technical aspect is the main reason I cannot recommend this game. but not the only reason

Saying this game runs poorly on my rig (R5 5600x, RX 480) would be a huge understatement. Despite me lowering the graphic settings to the lowest preset, the game cannot produce a stable 60 FPS.
Granted 40-50 fps is not the worst, but considering that at that low preset the game looks worse than molded mashed potatoes, I couldn't get myself to finish the game, yet alone continue past the first chapter.

Looks bad and runs even worse. No thanks.

From what I could tell, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood story is a prequel to its predecessor TNO. Due to the fact that I couldn't be bothered to play this technical mess past the first chapter, I cannot talk much about the story.

Gameplay wise though, not many changes were made. For a more in depth look at the horrible bland stealth, perk and combat system, refer to my Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

If you got a system that would run this game and you're looking to complete your Wolfenstein collection just for the sake of it - buy it at a discount.

Everyone else: Don't bother.

I had to force myself to finish this game, so I can't recommend it.
Released in 2014 by Machinegames it was supposed to be a new start for the Wolfenstein franchise.

Sadly this start is butchered by game mechanics conflicting with each other and a rather complex storyline that tries too hard to be taken seriously while having one of the most ridiculous plotlines in a video game ever.

Let's start with what was good though, namely the characters and the artwork/artdesign.
The weapons are reimagined in a way, that makes them definitely recognizable from their real life counterparts, but have an added twist to them, to make them fit in this alternate universe.
The NPCs are distinct from each other and stand out visually. Many different characters that follow along your journey (or rather, you follow along their journey, as Blazkowicz is a rather passive protagonist), have a variety of different motivations as to what is their cause for fighting them nazis. While it's not necessarily the case that the companions are deep and complex by nature, they don't have to be. Which brings me to my main point:


Wolfenstein at its core is a FPS, which means the shooting should be the main focus of the whole game. Wolfenstein's roots go way back to the 90s, where id software first laid the foundation of what FPS actually means, especially with their later title DOOM (ya might have heard of it).
As John Carmack once famously said:

Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.

When I think of Wolfenstein, my main thought and goal is to shoot them nazi scum . Everything else is just an add on that should never hold me back from what I actually want to do, which is unrelentless violence against fashists.
So why is it, that this game does the exact polar opposite? More often than not, the game takes away all your means to rampage against the regime to show you how much this character loves that character, or how sad this NPC is and what their motives are and why and how and so on and so forth. It stops you right in your tracks, often after you just picked up momentum, just to show you some arbitrary story or character related thing.

This does not mean that the cutscenes themselves are bad, far from it, the voice acting is decent enough and the presentation is mostly kick-ass. I liked the cutscenes and didn't skip them.

What I wished I could've skipped though are the endless "fetch-quest" missions, which occur after you're back in your hub which is the main hideout of the resistance . You visit this hub a couple of times during your plathrough and it is used to break up the action to give you some breathing room. This in itself is a good idea, hell even the FPS-Perfection that is Doom: Eternal does this, but if your action is so limited and flawed (will get to that shortly) the sudden halt of the game flow that these hubs present, just become tedious and annoying.
Your time spent in the hub is mostly dominated by fetching your NPCs various items of minor importance. At one time you are forced to fetch a tool to one of your companions, because they have lost it somehow. This minor ordeal becomes a whole 10 minute fetch quest down a sewage and along many corridors. All while really nothing is happening and you sit yourself and ask "Why am I not shooting stuff? Who cares about your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blow torch, I got nazis to kill".

So when you do finally get to the fun stuff, there are other things that prevent the game from fulfilling its true potential. Let's get to the combat:

Wolfenstein: The New Order's perk system, stealth system and core shooting mechanics are bad.

TNO gives the player a sense of choice for a more personalized playthrough and gives the option to choose their approach.
TNO has a RPG style "perk" system, meaning you can essentially level up Blazkowicz however you see fit. The options that you have are so mediocre and uninspired and range from "faster reload" to "faster sneak" to "little bit more ammo". These rather uninteresting options make you question why they are in the game in the first place. I never bothered with this system.

There is also the stealth mechanic. While I'm perplexed as to why stealth has found its way into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Wolfenstein game, I get what the devs where going for. Reach a broader audience, appeal to more players, meaning more potential buyers, etc. Also because it was 2014 and basically every shooter had to have some kind of stealth approach.
This wouldn't necessarily be a problem but TNOs stealth system is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bland, uninteresting and generic, it hurts to see. It couldn't get more generic if it tried: Crouch to sneak, kill with knife from behind, try to stay out of line of sight. And that's all. The AI itself isn't the brightest and sometimes even overlooks fallen comrades. No corpse hiding possible and the AI's routes are laughably predictable, to the point where the officers just walk up to a wall for you to be able to strike from behind.
"Hm, why yes Hans, zis wall does look rather interesting, does it not?"

Now to the CORE element of it all, the shooting.
With almost any weapon you have the crazy ability to dual wield.
Dual-wield pistols? Yeah, okay, seen that.
Dual-wield assault rifles? Oh, now you have my attention.
Dual-wield fully automatic shotguns equipped with shrapnel ammunition? HELL YEAH WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO EARLIER?!
Running around shooting the lesser dangerous soldiers is good fun, the gore makes you and the weapons feel powerful (as they should in this nazi-killing power fantasy). Sadly, this is where the good stuff stops.

Remember how cover based shooting was popular back when this game was released? Yeah, this game has it too. It actively discourages you from dual-wielding, which in itself is a cool concept, and forces you into cover and wait for your health to go up again.
This gameplay loop of "shoot a bit, cover and wait, shoot a bit, cover and wait, etc" is pace-breaking and bites itself with the dual-wielding mechanic. I mean, why are you giving me this ability, if you force me into cover anyways?
Now the cover system itself is not bad, you walk up to any wall and lean out from it, but also manually lean in any direction. This is decently made, but then again, isn't really fun if you mostly just have to hide and wait.
And you will do a lot of hiding and waiting in this game. One boss fight is even wholly centered around that very concept. It is also one of the worst boss fights I encountered in this game and none of the boss fights were particularly great, rather jarring .
If you encounter a Supersoldat, or a big mech, be prepared to dump magazine after magizine (leaving you with barely any ammunition to fight... again, in a Wolfenstein game? wth) with barely any damage feedback into them, as they are nothing more than slow bullet sponges that force you into hiding.

So the perk system is uninteresting, the stealth system bland as well and the shooting can be fun but also heavily flawed. That it?

Not quite, the music is a positive mention. Mick Gordon composed the music for TNO and did a great job as expected. As someone having played Doom 2016, the music immediately told me who its composer was. Mick has his own unique style that would later develop into one of the best soundtracks for a game ever created Doom: Eternal, baby! .

The graphics are okay, for 2014 they were in the mid range in terms of quality. Sadly, the heavy amount of post-processing effects made it look worse and at times reduce needed visibilty to almost 0.
Final Score:


There was definitely potential under the hood for a good FPS game. But a convoluted storyline, coupled with conflicting and uninspired game mechanics makes this game a husk of what it could have been.

Not a great DOOM game, but a decent horror-shooter.

tl;dr: So if you're looking for the OG Challenge - you won't find it here.
If you're looking to experience Doom 3 in a polished, a bit more refined but maybe slightly mistuned way, the BFG-Edition is your buddy.
For fans of the Doom series - get this one if you like heaps of lore.
Avoid if you're looking specifically for the good shootin' stuff (refer for that to Doom, Doom II and the modern Doom titles)

This review will be for the BFG-Edition specifically. (Later just mentioned as "Doom 3") I will go into a bit more detail about the difference between Doom 3: BFG Edition and the Vanilla Doom 3.


Doom 3 (often stylized as DOOM³) was initially released back in 2004, as a sequel to its predecessor Doom II: Hell on Earth from 1994. Story-wise it servers as a prequel to Doom II and focuses more on the horror aspects of Doom.

The BFG-Edition is a bundle of sorts, it includes both Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth as well as Doom 3. Released in 2012 it featured enhanced graphics, gameplay design changes, sound quality enhancements and more.

Such a design change was the addition of a mounted flashlight, meaning you could now carry a weapon AND toggle the flashlight at the same time, which wasn't possible in the original Doom 3. Before I get into that though, let's take a look at the:


It's a 3D first person shooter, with heavy horror elements and a focus on creating a scary atmosphere.

Now let's take a closer look at what that sentence actually means and how Doom 3 implemented these aspects.

The FPS-part of that sentence actually doesn't need any explaining. The original 1993 Doom wasn't the first FPS on the market, but it was the one who put PC gaming "on the map" and revolutionized the genre.
Not much has changed in Doom 3 regarding that aspect. You still have a variety of weapons (from the classic Shotgun to the high-tec plasma rifle to the RPG and more) to choose from to kill any and all demons that you come across in the approx. 7-8 hours it takes to complete the campaign.
Funnily enough I got an achievement, "Speed Runner" for completing the game within 10 hours or so. I was surprised, seeing as I took my time and played on a higher difficulty.

That brings me to the difficulty - or the lack thereof. Granted, I didn't play on Nightmare as it is not available on first playthroughs, but even on the veteran difficulty, the next in line in terms of difficulty, the game didn't present much of a challenge. Now I'd like to think of myself as an slightly above average FPS-Player in terms of skill (Aim, Movement, Decision-making, etc.), but with all the ammunition that I've found and the dubious amounts of health pickups scattered around the map, I was never in serious trouble.

Well, you could argue that that plays into the "power-fantasy" that Doom creates (see specifically Doom: Eternal for that), but that is not the case for Doom 3. In this game it is not intended that you feel like a demon-ripping god, rather a single, simple marine trying to fight through an hell infested mars base. The focus lies on the atmosphere it creates.
The weapons themselves are great from an audio-perspective but they still sorta feel weak. They have no "oomph" to them - if you're not basically touching the Imp with the barrel of your shotgun - it ain't killing it. Demons don't really respond to you damaging them, which makes fighting big guys like the hell-knight kinda lame. Sure, the imps fly all over the place after you hit 'em with your rocket launcher, but the hell-knight will just tank 5 of your rockets with seemingly no effect and then just decide to take a permanent nap.
Not all weapons are like that though, the chaingun and the plasma rifle can get rid of lower-demon trash pretty easily and quickly.

Weapons aside, the core gameplay-loop is what made this experience more tedious for me then I'd like to admit.
You start in the level - fight some demons in your average 2004 fps fashion. Quickly you find yourself stuck, because you need some kind of McGuffin. Often keycards (throwback to original Doom stuff - yayy) but to a point where it feels like you're not getting anywhere. Every 5 metres there is a door blocking you and waiting on you to find the right PDA with the security clearance so you can pass that door. Rinse and repeat. It's baffling how often you have to do that and how little variety in terms of spicing the gameplay up is.
So you kill demons (mediocre yay) and you look for mcguffins to open X/Y/Z or to talk to X/Y/Z or some other uninspired way to advance further (no yay). Repeated until nausea occurs.


I won't go into too much detail but I have to say - it wasn't too bad.
With atmosphere and the horror aspect at its core, Doom 3 made enough room for a story to be told in a decent way. A lot of exposition is dumped on the player, either through the voice acting or the mass of PDAs found in many of the levels. Reading the E-mails of these PDAs has a gameplay effect too - it can reveal codes for lockers that hold ammunition, weapons and health pickups.
But just the fact that the game stretches out so much, with just the aforementioned gameplay loop over and over again it becomes too much. In later levels you just skim through the text to find said code.
It'd be interesting to read the PDAs if it wasn't for the fact that you just picked up your 50th one and they are not even that well written.
except for the hilarious emails from marsbuddy website like pen1s enlargement and dubious goods being delivered, that's just hilarious



With the BFG-Edition you get the option to toggle from a 60FPS mode to a 120FPS mode which is really nice.
I never had any crashes during my time playing and it ran flawlessly. Weird is just the fact that the notice of "First time installation" comes up even much after the fact that I'm already hours into the game, but it starts normally so I don't really care.

Doom 3 was actually quite progressive back in 2004 with its (for the time) modern lighting effects and animations. You can see how much work they put into the engine to get the shadows right and it shows.
They even had sections where you had to follow a lightsource through a darkened section of the map, which on one side let the game flex its graphic strongsuit and had a neat gameplay component to it too.
Sadly, through the addition of the mounted flashlight in the BFG-Edition all that goes to waste as you can now toggle your flashlight at will.


I personally like the mounted flashlight change, but I can see why many hardcore vanilla-doom 3 fans don't - it is not the way the devs intended the player to play.
Coupled that with the fact that the BFG-Edition added more ammunition and health pickups, it becomes clearer why I never felt particularly challenged.

So if you're looking for the OG Challenge - you won't find it here.
If you're looking to experience Doom 3 in a polished, a bit more refined but maybe slightly mistuned way, the BFG-Edition is your buddy.
For fans of the Doom series - get this one if you like heaps of lore.
Avoid if you're looking specifically for the good shootin' stuff (refer for that to Doom, Doom II and the modern Doom titles)

Yeah, well it's CS.

Y'all know the deal.

Salt, skill, fun, and trolls.

Issa game.

What can I say, this game is just amazing. I don't wanna spoil the incredible storyline but this was an amazing journey. The storytelling is great, the narrative is amazing, the voice acting is fantastic, the gameplay is really fun and the unlockables make it even more enjoyable.

10/10 would pixel it again.

Okay, jokes aside, this is a fun little game. The game is about defusing a bomb. However, it's not always clear how to do that. You don't have a lot of time. It is a point-and-click type of "puzzle" game. This game can also be somewhat frustrating if you keep failing at a certain stage, but usually it's not that difficult to find the solution. Or just use a guide, if you need help. It's not that long, whaddya expect from a game costing 4€ but still really fun. You'll sometimes wonder How and why and where and what, but especially that makes the game so silly.

I recommend it, it's a fun and neat experience.

Unfortunately, a disappointment.

- The Optimization is horrible, I can't even get a stable 60FPS on the lowest settings, max. a FPS of 40 is achieved.
- The story may be somewhat interesting, I haven't gotten far enough to rate this aspect, but the Concept of it taking place in the French Revolution is pretty neat.
- Gameplay is actually not that bad, climbing is a bit too fast and unpredictable (Especially with low FPS). The side missions are the usual as in almost every AC game, so not that bad. Collectibles are everywhere and it'd take a lot of time to collect them all. Usually I have fun with collecting these in other AC Games but with only 35-40 FPS it's not that enjoyable.
- The Idea of the Coop-Aspect is great. Free roaming around a huge city with your friends is a lot of fun. Although it has quite some Issues like Lags for example, the Coop was the best experience I had with this game.
- Microtransactions. No thanks.

Conclusion:

As much as I like the AC Series, I can't recommend this one. I'd suggest buying maybe AC Black Flag. It's cheaper, still looks good, runs better and has almost every aspect you need in a AC Game done right.

Half-Life 2, eine Krone der Schöpfung aus dem Hause Valve, überzeugt nicht nur mit seiner Action,seiner Story und der besten Kritik von Metacritic, sondern auch mit der Tatsache das viele Mods auf der Engine von HL2 basieren, und somit noch mehr Spielspass garantieren! EIn muss in jeder Sammlung von einem guten Gamer!