Évaluations récentes de Whiteswart

Rhianna Pratchett, quite a well-known for now video game writer. Can't really estimate all of her works, but, as for Mirror's Edge, Tomb Raider, and especially, the Thief restart (2014), can't really praise her performance. I mean, it might be not so bad as some unrelated writings, but... She really presses the wrong keys, pulls the wrong strings, like, all over the book. I understand the ideas and intentions in the stories mentioned, however, even with all the drama and action moments... Rihanna draws the implausible characters who seem incapable of the deeds attributed to them in the circumstances in which she throws them. That deep discrepancy between the images of the characters and the general line of events, no matter how well they are imagined and written down, destroys all immersion, breaks all the magic of empathy. Moreover, the video game is a complex multi-component work, where there are enough problems even without some implicit but felt subconsciously plot stutters that break the desire to follow the story. In the case of the Thief, for example, there was a terribly annoying constant loading of levels when moving through locations - that alone was almost enough to drop the game after a short while.

By this point, you can guess I am not a fan of Rhianna's works. Well... That's the right time to speak of the Lost Words: Beyond the Page. Because it is magnificent. It's a fantastic piece of work, where the story, the every written word, magically collides with the visuals and gameplay, making it all a splendid entertainment piece, an unquestionable example of the concept that video games are the art. Like, One of the Most Important Art Forms in History.

Sure, it's still quite a girlish tale, so, my wife and daughter welcomes it much more than my teen son, who's in the age of denying the obviously girlish products. But, just because it's so girlish from the start, it's working just as needed. A girlish trope in Mirror's Edge, Tomb Raider and the Thief, by the degree Rhianna used it in her cooking, had almost ruined the taste of the served dish. She was not the author of the whole story, the whole concept in those other games, and simply by writing some pieces of text here and there, we ended up with cadavers, where the skin of one creature was stretched over the skeleton of another, anatomically not at all close to the intended appearance.

Again, returning to the Lost Words, that's where all works as intended. As needs to be. All in the right places. Maybe you'll not like this game - if you're not as much a reader as I am, and don't ready to follow some little girl in her diary writings - but I still think it's a masterpiece. Mark 10/10. If you have kids (at least somewhere in your heart) - get this game! It's one of the best for your buck.

Strongly despise it.

A solid 3-in-a-row mechanic for one part of gameplay, but... Sexual torturing, raping, and other obviously unacceptable - and unavoidable - actions as the other, supposedly the main part of playing time. Sure, it's all just a painted fantasy, just a game... But a really, really sick one. I can't, and I could never understand people finding a sexual amusement in watching or doing tortures to other live beings. We're talking about scenes with pouring acid on someone's genitals/mammary glands, or electrocuting it. And that's just a part of the game, huh?

If there'll be some voting for expulsion of this "game" from the trading floors, I will definitely come.

Murderous Pursuits, yet another attempt to relaunch once famous multiplayer hunter-and-victim-in-one-person stealth killer game, The Ship. Graphics is better, obviously, and the game engine allows to set on the scene the hoards of people.

The Ship was really great thing back in the days. Our actual subject, however, can't hold its charm. For one, the very idea of the first game was notably diminished in Murderous Persuits, making the game process more casual and random, but also much less challenging, because of the changed accent, from stealth and covering your tracks, to killing streaks and direct ambushes right amidst the crowd of bystanders... More action, usually, means a good thing - for PvP shooters like Counter Strike, Warface or Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville. For a stealth game... obviously, by the look at the other, more successful by moment multiplayer stealth killer games, the balance should still honour stealth and social interactions above plain killing sprees.

Second thing to mention, is the current online. It's about nil. For the Ship, released 15 years ago, it's normal. For a game released 4 years ago... Probably normal as well. If it's a bad multiplayer game. Or just insufficiently advertised and supported after the release. For this particular case, though... It's more about bad game balance, making it a very short-lived and certainly not inspiring gaming experience. So you can walk past it without any hesitation, as there's nothing to see in particular. I'd rather encourage you to try another session in the old The Ship game than trying this too-late-for-dinner un-successor.

Train a hobo into a street fighter, gather some buds and organize a gang...

Fights are automatic, you just need to consider the training path for your grunts. The training and survival part is boring as usual, just spend some time to grind the resources... Nothing special here.

The thing that I actually liked is that you have two paths for every location, you can make some good deeds and then some bad deeds, and you can't tell from the start which one is what. Even when you have choices like to help satanists to perform their ritual or to help a pastor to banish them... Yeah, post-industrial morale trips, as sketchy as the Adults Swim reprises. And maybe even less funny, for the major part of audience.

Finally, content-wise and stability-wise, this game is certainly not worth a 'complete game' status. Beta? Sure. But I wouldn't recommend getting this Garbage any time soon, even bother with adding it to your wishlist... It is simply not good enough. There is not enough drive to play it and overcome its weak spots.

The mark is 5/10. Not the worst game of the year, sure, but very limited by the combination of not-so-cool humour and not-so-attractive visual style and gameplay process... And not too stable to play it on the hard difficulty, because of constant freezes when you need to restart the game to continue with it (no continues on hard). Duh.

Don't know about the game itself, but it constantly spams me with Discord invites, forcing new and new windows in my web browser, and that's Highly irritating.
0/10 for misusing .exe files with spam additions

Considering the price of the product relative to the amount of labor invested, Arizona Derby looks very cool. The game topic feels unique: combining the fastest sports cars bodies and the ultimate off-road monster truck wheels and suspensions, we build some fantastic vehicles to drive the fantastic landscapes. The visual part may blow up some minds... especially if you're still in that teenager state-of-mind, dreaming of supercars, and not of the budget ones, which will take your kids to school and you to the office...

However, speaking of the actual gameplay value... It's a total mess. Too much cheap bling and fake gold, too little on the side of the basic things people expect from driving the cars in the virtual game - I mean, adequate controls, car maneuverability, and directions where to go.

The only type of contest that we have is the sprint-type single-play race, where you are supposed to drive through the checkpoints. Sure, the locations vary, and they look gorgeous. All those hills and water units around, range of landscapes from the snowy Siberia to sandy Arabia, jungles, beaches... Alas, it all means nothing, if you can't figure out by the whole HUD and all info provided by the game, where to go for the next checkpoint. Well, you can follow the lead, scripted AI cars supposedly know their way around maps, but... Even the AI loses tracks quite often.

As the result, Arizona Derby cannot be called a complete racing game. It's still a beta build, with a somewhat decent amount of content, in terms of cars and maps, but still lacking the core elements for any racing game - some properly made tracks throughout those maps, AI that is not losing the consciousness after a little while, some maneuverability for the cars.

Also, if we look at the game achievements, the developer set the number of races that we need to win on 1000. One-friggin-thousand. Well, I've completed all the provided tracks, 'beat' all the location bosses, and it took less than 40 races! There's just not enough drive to play this game longer than that. Hi-score charts? Cheated. Achievements? Unlocked in SAM, I suppose. There's no way that so many people would play this game fairly, 1k races long. Even if you are a teenager with plenty of free time, enjoying all those very repetitive show-off visual effects like that low-riding jet fighter, and all other bling. And rap music OST...

So, as of mark, it's 5/10. The game is only half-baked, and also quite overestimates itself with those stupid achievements. If you're not a videogame streamer, who would love some 'What the hell is happening?' content on your channel, I seriously doubt you'll need to buy and play Arizona Derby. Even for that low price.

Also (NB): please, don't read text messages while driving. Full speed or not, doesn't matter. I'm saying it there because this game spams you with such messages all the races through. Welcoming to the neighborhood texts, SMS from your AI opponents, advertisement stuff... It's unbearable! I guess even AI can't drive properly and loses the guideline script with those messages all over the screen.

You know, many people quite rightly scold War Thunder for objective problems.

A rather high entry threshold, due, among other things, to a huge number of non-obvious variables such as damage and other technical characteristics of all that significant machinery park, featured in the game. Plus, an over-complicated user interface, which I personally still haven’t figured out very well.

Many problems are also caused by the economic model of the game, which, after some time invested, presses harder than the life behind the Soviet Iron Curtain - where everything seems to be possible, and for everyone... But someday later, in the distant bright future. In the meantime, though, you have to bend your back and your pride somewhere in the fields and cultivate potatoes in order to survive.

Finally on that drastic downfall list, sometimes the matchmaking system is extremely tiring, creating oppositions like '15 strong players of level 100 + 1 vegetable against 12 vegetables and 3-4 players who would be happy to play well, but ... they have already been circled and killed 3 times in a row'. Or, in short, 'got gaijined', as people call it.

But! War Thunder still provides a really unique gameplay with different branches of war machines in one session, and it's really cool to jump from tank or cruiser ship to some CAS plane, and then hop back to the ground/sea level. Also, If we look at the statistics, we'll see that in real numbers, War Thunder is doing quite well! And that is especially true after the years 2020/2021, when so many people like me, have joined the game.

See, I am not a multiplayer guy, actually. I came to War Thunder because I love war machines. From a historical and technical perspective. But also, and now I think it's even more important, people are playing War Thunder to have those friendly, warm hugs! You know, when two of you collide in that endless sky, it means something, right?

So... If you ever feel lonely in this harsh, cold pandemic world, join this game, to let your steam off a bit, and have some hugs from so many other people like you, from the entire globe. Let's leave the war to the games, and have peace on our minds, and what's beyond it! Love you, people! Have fun!

Very short, very easy, but still good as a quick +1 complete game. The story is cheesy, but somehow feels a bit better than Hero of the Kingdom 3. Therefore, my mark is 6/10. Still, I can only recommend getting it in a full bundle, or with some proper discount.

Well, in the end, I'm still positive about this game, but the charm has faded...

You see, Hero of the Kingdom 3, on the basic level, provides quite the same experience as the HotK 1 or 2. And it's a good thing! Sure, the gameplay is static, the challenge is none, but, there's that feeling of adventure and accomplishment that pushes you forward till the end of the game - which is not that far, by the way, so it's an easy way to spend an evening and get +1 complete game for your profile.

However, speaking about Hero 3 in particular again, it's... lame. And lazy. And grindy, more than ever before. There are not enough different locations, the backgrounds for several spots are looking just or almost the same way as in the previous 2 games... Like someone copypasted previous works, without actually changing it notably.

Plus, that respawn items feature, when the whole map doesn't have enough collectibles for the achievement, and you need to waltz some screens back and forth, waiting for resources respawn... Plus that Golden Fish quest, where you need to wait for Random Generator to spawn a proper fish on one of the few fish spawn locations...

As I said, this game is still a possible option to spend an evening without too much hassle. But, considering the downsides, I can't value it higher than 5/10. Buy it only in the bundle.

You know, by some major terms for ResidentEvil-like 'survival horror' action games, Zombi is not a bad thing. Actually, if I will try to compare one by one its main features with some late additions to that sub-genre, say, RE Village, for example (GOTY 2021, by some notable opinions!), it's quite on the same page. Well, yeah, some visual enhancements surely make it not completely fair matching, but, speaking for the lore complexity, scene detalization, basic gameplay, with action and traveling mechanics... Zombi, while obviously dated, being released first on WiiU almost 10 years ago - is not a bad game, by definition. I mean, it's a decent game, made with some AA-class standards. It's not even a bad port from the console! Considering the major common issues with bad ports, like killed framerate and controls... It's not the case for Zombi!

However, even by that major comparison with the 'survival horror' games in general, I can't really vouch for Zombi for being a really good and notable one. Decent? Comme il faut? Yeah. Kinda.

Alas, PC version Zombi doesn't have any notable hook points at moment. Diseased London? Well, except for some Buckingham Palace interiors, all the scenery that you'll see, be the generic metro stations and sewer drains. All in that dirty gray, eye tormenting colours palette. Even the very dull Vampyr game made some better effort, depicting troubled London. And it's certainly not the game I would address for any proper sightseeing. Variety of weapons? Seriously, I saw that 'pro' point for Zombi, probably, hundreds of times. But wait. Isn't that the game with the constant lack of any kind of ammunition we're talking about? Well, if you have infinite ammo, then yes, there are 3 pistols, two long rifles (one of those is an SMLE carbine, a rare bird in videogames), two SMGs, two assault rifles, 3 shotguns, and a crossbow. Not the worst tools selection, sure, but... For one, the most part of those guns you'll get way too close to the final, meaning, you'll not get the time to use them properly. And two - the inventory interface, while not being the worst in the genre, can't be anyhow described as proper and unblemished. So, you're kinda bound to stack with the basic pistol and cricket bat, from the very start, till the very end.

Initially, I was really satisfied with the complexity of zombies' behavior, and the fighting part of the game. Again, I can easily set it in comparison with RE Village, and maybe (maybe!), it'll be even better at some angles. However, the overall game pace, the constant backtracking, and other minor itches washed away that feeling of satisfaction. After some time invested, Zombi turned out to be rather dull than anything else. And... Sure, that's only my personal, quite biased opinion. I've seen probably too many games, to cherish Zombi for gameplay. But I said it's decent, by the general score, right? Right. And... No. It's far from being alright.

It's constantly crashing during the transition between levels, and, considering the fact you can only save the game in the safe house, you're bound to lose the part of your game progress with every crash. Sure, the reload is working... But then, there are some broken quest lines. You can easily miss some quest triggers, and broke the questline. And in that case, reload will not help - because it's a single save slot game. Once you lose some quest trigger, it's final, you can only restart from the beginning...

Also, speaking about restarts. For the most part of the game, you do some quests, facing some situations that are supposed to be unique. And the endgame? It is ruining it all. The final sequence of the game makes everything that you've accomplished - irrelevant. You're just one of the legion of avatars, that pattern so wrongly beloved by Ubisoft. That thing alone, without even the tech issues, and dull visuals, kills all the drive. Zombi is a single-player-only game! Any multiplayer features (somewhat similar to the Dead Souls 1) were cut off completely during the porting process. So, that feeling of some random guy, shooting some random zombies... Not a strong selling point. Also, if you're an achievement hunter, Zombi is that kind of game that expects you to play it three times through! You can't get the badge for chicken mode, completing it on normal, and you'll not get the normal badge, struggling it through the survival difficulty.

In the end, Zombi is just not good enough to be recommended. Technical issues are quite severe, but, even if there wouldn't be any, it's still some generic title made by Ubisoft standards. Except, it's not even a proper open world with some sightseeing value. As the result, my mark is 5/10 - despite the fact that the first hour or two is not so bad.