Understated expansion but I quite love it. Added finishers to the game, addresses the contradictions in the Hive ideology after the death of Oryx, and has both the best raid in the game's entire lifespan (Garden of Salvation) and one of my favorite lore books. It's not a huge swing like Witch Queen or Final Shape, but it's consistently good.
However it did herald sunsetting all of the seasonal content which is perhaps the single biggest barrier to new players getting into this game, so fuck Bungie for that one.
However it did herald sunsetting all of the seasonal content which is perhaps the single biggest barrier to new players getting into this game, so fuck Bungie for that one.
I went into this game expecting to hate it - since FF7 is one of my favorite games and all I want from a remake is just slightly improved models - but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it! Once the combat system clicked, it was very satisfying to play and buildcraft, and I like a lot of the story changes and meta-commentary on trying to live up to player expectations and misconceptions.
However, the ending is so fucking stupid and bad, presumably because they didn't wanna just end with the highway fight like the original, that I finished with a sour taste in my mouth. Hoping the sequels don't continue down that path, because if so I will hate them.
However, the ending is so fucking stupid and bad, presumably because they didn't wanna just end with the highway fight like the original, that I finished with a sour taste in my mouth. Hoping the sequels don't continue down that path, because if so I will hate them.
2021
Cute toy akin to marble racing, but that's it. No staying power.
2020
Clever premise but underdesigned. Has most in common with "dungeon biome"-type games like What Did I Do To Deserve This, but because of how the game is structured, the optimal solution is to just flood the central chamber and fill it with lobsters and frogs. Disappointingly bad, would highly recommend Wratch's Den over this.
2016
The worst Dark Souls game, besides the meta-commentary on being asked to raise the dead over and over until they crumble to nothingness (do you get it?!).
The combat is annoying and unpredictable, enemies track way too aggressively, and the RPG trappings are less esoteric and therefore less interesting. By smoothing out so many of the rough edges in favor of "just make it harder", it smooths out all of what I love about Souls games. Plus using the "boss has two or more phases" with EVERY boss completely ruins the point of having surprise phases delineated by cutscenes.
I can understand why people think this is the best one, and why it's so popular, but I think it loses a little bit of that fire (heh) that made Dark Souls so special to me.
The combat is annoying and unpredictable, enemies track way too aggressively, and the RPG trappings are less esoteric and therefore less interesting. By smoothing out so many of the rough edges in favor of "just make it harder", it smooths out all of what I love about Souls games. Plus using the "boss has two or more phases" with EVERY boss completely ruins the point of having surprise phases delineated by cutscenes.
I can understand why people think this is the best one, and why it's so popular, but I think it loses a little bit of that fire (heh) that made Dark Souls so special to me.
2015
Played this pacifist because the game made it clear I could at the beginning, which basically makes it an adventure game instead of an RPG. Well-deserved iconic status, hard to believe it's almost been ten years.
2011
Worked on this one. One of the roughest launches of any game I've worked on. My boss was a douchebag.
2021
It's okay! It's kinda funny that there's all these world-building character details that you get approximately zero context for because the whole game is multiplayer and there's no singleplayer. But the multiplayer is still Battlefield in the style that 3 and 4 cemented, and it does "feel" cool to make tactical plays and be smart during tense situations. So I like it.
2020
Top-down racing game about splattering pedestrians and blasting the other cars with whatever weapon you happen to find on the road. It's not really a rally game in any sense except aesthetic, but it is definitely a super fun racer. Greatly enjoyed playing through a campaign. The procedural generation could use a little more variety and the upgrades could be a little less restrictive, but those are my only real complaint. Good chill-out game.
Worked on this one, primarily on Auric Basin.
2016
Come back to this every year or so. Really good. I have a Shaman/Soldier build that has precisely one button - left-click to attack - and stacks so many passives that it instagibs all nearby enemies on auto-attack. Now that's gameing, folks
2016
Worked on this one. One of the worst gigs I've ever had.
Nostalgic for sure - I loved this back in the day - but the rose-colored glasses have fallen off.
A bad interface and awkward base-building hinder it from its full potential. It also has poor faction / unit design where more expensive units (particularly barrage units) are simply outright better, and there's none of the clarity or direction of similar games like Warcraft or Command and Conquer, where every unit has an obvious role in your composition. Instead you mostly just throw together whatever you can produce and hurl it at the enemy in increasingly large waves.
It does have funny tongue-in-cheek cutscenes, but that's the only real highlight. Watch for all the sly jokes in the fake-computer-crawl before every mission. I appreciate getting a bunch of goofy Australians together to make The Apocalypse But Stupid FMVs for an otherwise extremely mid RTS.
Interesting for people like me who grew up with the genre, or those who want a glimpse into history, but that's it. Very funny that these guys also developed Shadowrun SNES!
A bad interface and awkward base-building hinder it from its full potential. It also has poor faction / unit design where more expensive units (particularly barrage units) are simply outright better, and there's none of the clarity or direction of similar games like Warcraft or Command and Conquer, where every unit has an obvious role in your composition. Instead you mostly just throw together whatever you can produce and hurl it at the enemy in increasingly large waves.
It does have funny tongue-in-cheek cutscenes, but that's the only real highlight. Watch for all the sly jokes in the fake-computer-crawl before every mission. I appreciate getting a bunch of goofy Australians together to make The Apocalypse But Stupid FMVs for an otherwise extremely mid RTS.
Interesting for people like me who grew up with the genre, or those who want a glimpse into history, but that's it. Very funny that these guys also developed Shadowrun SNES!
2013
Game for people stricken with terminal "buildcrafting and reward systems" brain sickness. Naturally I fucking love it. Was a founder back in the closed beta days, still play it at least once a year, truly one of the F2P greats. Lets you sell shit on the secondary market for premium currency to whales which is probably the single greatest thing about it. Will suck as much or as little time as you are willing to put into it.
Awkward, over-ambitious, and not particularly good, but I have such fond memories playing the multiplayer that I can't in good conscience rate this lower than what I did.
You can tell this is an FPS made by an RTS studio because they didn't really know what to do for things like 'weapons' and 'enemy variety' and 'map layouts'. Buildings in the single-player are mostly mazes packed with various kinds of easily-dispatched infantry, the vehicle sections are almost completely linear, and the 'gunfeel' is truly terrible. There is a nice variety of weaponry, but not a ton of reason to use things besides the rifle or sniper. The vehicle physics hold up surprisingly well though; driving a humvee kicks ass???
The worst part though is that the player character is an obnoxious action movie dweeb with zero comedy or camp to him. In one scene he scopes his ex's butt and actively comments on how hot she is. Sometimes he says the commando catchphrases. Concentrated cringe! Likewise, the plot is oatmeal mush that means and amounts to nothing.
Still, it swung for the fences even if it hit a foul, and the multiplayer on huge servers of people mowing each other down in endless stalemates was so much fun. It's not unplayably bad, but definitely a relic of its time. While there is an Unreal Engine remake (Renegade X), it doesn't have very many players at time of writing, and has been stuck in development hell working on the Tiberian Sun version of this game's core loop.
A nice trip down memory lane. Only worth playing for the Command and Conquer completionists.
Last mission too hard.
You can tell this is an FPS made by an RTS studio because they didn't really know what to do for things like 'weapons' and 'enemy variety' and 'map layouts'. Buildings in the single-player are mostly mazes packed with various kinds of easily-dispatched infantry, the vehicle sections are almost completely linear, and the 'gunfeel' is truly terrible. There is a nice variety of weaponry, but not a ton of reason to use things besides the rifle or sniper. The vehicle physics hold up surprisingly well though; driving a humvee kicks ass???
The worst part though is that the player character is an obnoxious action movie dweeb with zero comedy or camp to him. In one scene he scopes his ex's butt and actively comments on how hot she is. Sometimes he says the commando catchphrases. Concentrated cringe! Likewise, the plot is oatmeal mush that means and amounts to nothing.
Still, it swung for the fences even if it hit a foul, and the multiplayer on huge servers of people mowing each other down in endless stalemates was so much fun. It's not unplayably bad, but definitely a relic of its time. While there is an Unreal Engine remake (Renegade X), it doesn't have very many players at time of writing, and has been stuck in development hell working on the Tiberian Sun version of this game's core loop.
A nice trip down memory lane. Only worth playing for the Command and Conquer completionists.
Last mission too hard.