I decided after 10 years since playing FIFA 13 I would return to FIFA (now EA Sports FC) and as expected, nothing has changed. Gameplay is no different and the AI appears to be poorer than in older titles with Goalkeepers in particular failing to save the simplest of shots, and can easily be manipulated up front. Short passes can fail to go to the nearest player and go elsewhere, or players won't bother to intercept the ball. Referees give red cards for the slightest touch and you can easily get away with a yellow card just from breaking someone's legs. In regards to new updates, they seem to breed new bugs and it feels like the game gets even worse with each one. I don't think I need to touch Ultimate Team's focus on gambling and greed as this is a typical practice by EA. As of recently, EA have been caught out using DDA (Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment) which comes at no surprise as all FIFA titles, in particular FUT mode uses scripting to favour one team over another, artificially forcing one team to become difficulty adjusted depending on your skill level and how well you do. It can make matches very unfair. EA typically deny their wrongdoings but as we know, they're terrible liars.

Mordhau is a precise, strategic medieval combat game where at its core can be a fun if not challenging experience, only somewhat let down by high ranking players who exploit and abuse attack animations and mechanics that make it a total nightmare for new and experienced players. This is a problem the developers who were fans of Chivalry, a game that had the exact same issues wanted to address and fix have not bothered with over the span of 4 years since the initial release. This in turn has forced newcomers and long existing players to back out of the experience. To be clear I'm not bashing the combat system overall as when you're in confrontation with players who play skillfully and fairly, it really is engaging, testing and fun. Another primary reason for people abandoning the game is due to a lack of regular content updates and the reported toxicity of the community over the years (I kept my chat box off from the start for a reason.)


So apart from the odd frustrations, there are good aspects to Mordhau. You can customize your own "mercenaries" where you can create unique and stylized soldiers with different weapons, armour sets, utilities, traits and feature options. If you've been playing a long time, you'll know the most iconic character is a bald, naked man wielding a maul yelling "charge!" in a high pitched, Foppish voice. Maps are interesting, immersive and well designed, ranging from the narrow cities of Feitoria where close quarter battles are more fierce to the open land of the Crossroads.

In regards to player interactions (I've only played on official servers), people can be outright hilarious at times which is one of the reasons I kept playing. The exchange of apt emote responses, amusing interactions with enemies and allies, and the bards who play some banging tunes that we can dance to. So it's not all bad when you can hop into a server where everyone can make the experience a good time.

Far Cry 2 is only marginally better than the first game. Within the first 3-4 hours you'll realize most of the mission structure is just going from Point A to Point B. AI behaviour is overzealous where you'll be getting into firefights a lot outside of missions, where it becomes a total distraction from the main story and they always respawn at captured outposts. In regards to content for an open world game, there's not much going on - barren, boring and repetitive. A few of the notable, more interesting mechanics would be that of the malaria issue where you have to pop pills every now and then, and also weapon conditioning/ jamming where if you use enemy weapons they're more likely to be damaged or in a rough state, which encourages the player to buy new weapons to equip that are fully functional. The save game system requires you to visit specific save points throughout the world (although you can manual save), however due to no autosave feature which most of us are used to by now, if you forget to save you'll find your progress being wiped back to your last save point.

So ten years later, I return to this game after going through Sniper Elite 3 and 4 over that period of time. As much as I enjoyed playing this game during Christmas 2012, the experience now gives me a reality check: this game is mediocre, strictly linear and the AI is god awful. I can't stress enough how unforgiving Sniper Elite V2 can be due to bare stealth mechanics, forced confrontation and scripted segments where you'll be taken off guard. Take one shot in this game outside of a sound mask and every single AI unit knows your precise location, not "oh that shot came from over there, let's send a search party out and be cautious" like in the later games, but rather "we know straight away where he is" and they'll fire down on you with ridiculous accuracy using only SMGs. You cannot manual save in this game, so you have to rely on being overly cautious yourself or suffer at the hands of an annoying checkpoint system.

Sniper Elite V2's remastered visuals are one of the nicer things about this game. Graphically they're pleasing to look at and are a definite upgrade from the original version. The sound design is also better, at least in my opinion. It's just a shame the developers didn't bother enhancing the AI behaviour, in which case I think this would have passed off as a solid, challenging game; not an unforgiving chore.

To conclude on a positive note, the only mechanic that kept my attention with Sniper Elite V2, like all the other Sniper Elite games are the x-ray (bulletcam) kills which are gruesomely entertaining. Sniping in this game in general is just a satisfying experience.

Sherwood Dungeon is a web based, indie MMORPG title that first released in 2002 under the name Sherwood Temple, with the original version now referred to as Sherwood Classic and later followed up with Sherwood Dungeon in 2005. Recalling my initial experiences, this game was a basic MMORPG with a developer that had ambitious views for its future. Player models and animations were generic, the world wasn't exactly pretty and there weren't really any goals to strive for. On a more important note the game had to compete with the big boys, RuneScape and World of Warcraft which doomed its attraction from the start.