This game was genuinely great until Trevor gets introduced lol

I've replayed and beat this game three times (Xbox 360, Xbox One then PC) and I've had fun playing it but to be honest I didn't care much about the story and just played it to do crazy stuff.

After playing IV and paying more attention to stuff, I wanted to replay V to get a better perspective of how I'd view at as I'm older and I was genuinely having a lot of fun at first. I really like Michael and Franklin as characters, they're both funny but have some traits about them that make them feel like they could be real people. The missions in the game are also pretty varied and enjoyable and IMO, much better than IV's missions.

However, as soon as you finish the Jewelry Store heist, I feel like the game's story just completely declines and even the missions start to become much less fun.

I fucking hate Trevor, there's genuinely not a single thing I like about him as an adult. He's ugly, insanely try hard edgy with him being a cannibal and being into bestiality for some reason? He's dick to pretty much everyone unless its made for comedic value like how he falls in love for Martin's wife because she's a silly old lady (because its funny I guess). He just completely embodies the QUIRKY RANDOM🤪 era of the early 2010's when this game was made and Rockstar tries to glaze him as much as possible and make him seem so funny and badass when he's just an insane retard.

Trevor's missions fucking suck too and I hate all of Trevor's friends. All of his friend's barely exist after you leave for LS in the part of the game where you're FORCED to play as Trevor and they all just suck him off and praise him and have no other traits. Again, Rockstar tries SO HARD to make you like Trevor but I feel like it would be impossible for anyone over the age of 18 to do so.

If it was just Michael and Franklin it would be a cool dynamic between the rich class who's disillusioned with materialism and Franklin who's trying to grind to get to the top. Trevor is has like no thematic reasoning in the story besides just being apart of Michael's past, he's such a FORCE!

This game in general has a lot of places where it jumps the shark in terms of trying way too hard to be satire to the point where it isn't funny. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of funny things in the game but so many of the Weazel News ads on the radio made me roll my eyes and there's still plenty of characters outside of Trevor's story that are just obnoxious and way too cartoonishly annoying like all of Michael's family. GTA has always had pretty on the nose stuff in terms of humor but idk I feel like in V they try way too hard.

I do like some of the characters though. I really liked Lamar and Franklin's dynamic (It's too bad Franklin just doesn't exist in the story after Trevor is introduced 🙃) and there are plenty of things that are cool about the game. Los Santos is really cool, the radio is great, I love the amount of customization and money sinks with the cars, weapons, clothes, stocks, real estate, etc.

I just am really disappointed with how much worse this game gets after the Jewelry Heist because tbh if the game was just as consistently good beforehand, I may even say that this game is better than IV, even despite its detail and gameplay downgrades.

Regardless of all the things I bitch about, the game is still pretty enjoyable IMO, just very disappointing in a lot of ways.

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU PLAY THIS GAME ON PC, MAKE SURE TO GET RADIO RESTORED and FUSION FIX MODS. When R* re released this game on PC, they cut like more than half of the songs from the base game and DLCs due to licenses expiring. Fusion Fix helps optimize the game better and adds missing visuals.

I pretty much loved almost everything about this game except for the actual missions themselves.

I loved the interactivity of everything in the game. It's especially notable in combat when you see enemies ragdoll different depending on where they're hit or shot but the details go beyond that to just tiny details around the environment like being able to chip and break walls or windows which is really impressive for GTA game and also just makes the game feel much more satisfying.

The story was also probably my favorite so far out of all the GTA games I've beaten, its the most grounded and believable story while still retaining a lot of comedic elements of the previous games. I really like Niko as a character and especially near the end of the game, I really was invested in how the game led to where it went depending on what choices I'd made earlier in the story.

I really enjoy the design of Liberty City, I really miss the more closely condensed design of GTA maps where everything feels close together and more detailed oppose to Los Santos in GTA V that feels like a pain in the ass to drive through because its a lot more vertically positioned rather than horizontal like Liberty City.

The radios in this game are amazing as well, so many bangers. I thought it would be worth mentioning since you spend so much time in GTA driving around, listening to the radio.

Like I said earlier, the biggest gripe I have with this game is the missions. Almost all of them feel the exact same and do genuinely end up feeling like errands rather than something that I feel genuinely invested and interested into getting into. Especially with how many different characters the game introduces, it makes a lot of missions feel trivial and kind of like a slog to keep the player busy. Almost every mission is just (Drive here-> Kill this guy->Drive away from cops-> earn $___). It's very dull.

I also like the idea of the friend reputation system but in execution, it again feels more like an actual chore to manage rather than something that adds extra depth to the game. However, listening to the dialogue between friends is always intriguing, it just can become annoying when you feel the need to continuously keep up the reputation of the all the random ass friends you've gotten throughout the game.

Great game overall though, it's a game I played a lot of online of as a kid but I never beat until now.

My favorite game of all time.

I don't really know where to begin with New Vegas tbh. I replay this game just about every single year or so and I never get sick of it, of course I'll add some mods to refresh my experience but even without mods that add more stuff to the game, this game is still an absolute masterpiece.

Obviously this game requires a few patches to get running in stable state because of the fact its an older game that was only made in a year and a half. However, this should honestly be expected with most older games and if you cry about having to spend like 5 minutes max installing NVSE and 4GB patch you're an absolute bitch LOL

I love pretty much everything about this game. Even if its dated, I still love the gameplay and how many different kinds of weapons and armor there are in the game that can allow the player to choose so many different unique playstyles.

This game has an absolute fuck ton of quests, way more actual quests than both Fallout 3 and 4 and also of much higher quality that doesn't just consist of shooting galleries or choices that are purely obvious/black and white.

The narrative and writing in the game is so great, it really builds upon the strongest points of Fallout 1 and 2's writing and world building. New Vegas focuses more upon a truly POST-apocalyptic world rather than a freshly apocalyptic world like the Bethesda Fallout games, this game's world feels genuinely alive and authentic.

The role playing in this game allows for so many unique choices for most quests that really makes the world change around you as you play then game, every playthrough can feel completely different.

I mean there's only so much I can say about New Vegas that people haven't already said, this game basically takes the greatest elements of the first two Fallout games and puts it in the FPS/Open World format of Fallout 3 and just completely improves upon it in every single way. I genuinely think all of the cons of this game all come down to how rushed the game was but even then, they're all so minor and do not take away from how amazing this game is.

This game is only better than Starfield by this much 🤏 because its not plagued by insanely stupid mechanics and a million loading screens. This game is equally as mediocre and lame in almost every single way.

This game at its very core is just “guys its fallout but we made it our own thing 🙂." Except its missing practically every single aspect of what makes Fallout so appealing.

There's a very limited amount of quests to do in this game and all of the planet's maps are also very small and limited, really not allowing the player to explore and walk around very much at all to find anything interesting.

The combat is genuinely worse than Fallout 4, people were coping mad hard after getting burned by Bethesda after FO4 and 76. The controls feel incredibly stiff with really clunky animations and recoil. The bootleg VATS is also just bullet time lol, it is incredibly uninspired.

Despite being an RPG, the world in this game is so fucking bad, it's insane. I don’t know what Obsidian was trying to make the audience feel when making this game other than “corporations are evil!”

Genuinely, the first big choice you make in this game is choosing between a generic, corrupt corporation- run town or a group of deserters that take human bodies and decompose them so they can grow plants.

Bro, just because you make the player choose between two evils doesn’t make it good writing. Both sides are cartoonishly stupid and have almost no redeemable qualities at all. The corporations are unbelievably dumb because the writers didn’t want to compromise the player from being drilled in the head with the idea that CORPORATIONS ARE EVIL! It's so shallow and boring, just like the rest of the game itself.

That's the thing too, the corporations that are supposed to be evil and control like every area in the game are some of the dumbest people alive. Like the mayor in Edgewater denying that only eating fake canned tuna isn't related to the entire fucking town becoming sick?! Or maybe the fact that even in slogans its all done to make fun of how mediocre the corporations are.

Like with Spacer's Choice's motto being "It's not the best choice, it's Spacer's Choice!" and also how an endless amount of NPCs in this game will say shit like "Erm, I'll have you know that our surgery success rate has increased to a solid 58% succces rate!" Like bro we get it, corporations are evil and dumb lol.

But because of this narrative, none of the NPCs feel like actual human beings, they feel like puppets that just exist to reinforce the idea of corporations being dumb. It’s shoved into your face constantly and even if it's supposed to be satire, it's all this game is. The only issue is that this game is a fucking RPG where I’m supposed to be immersed and care about the world but how can I do that when the writer’s purposefully make every NPC so dumb and one dimensional to reinforce a shallow narrative?!

I genuinely hate how this game looks aesthetically too. Like some of this the environments and cities can look kind of cool I guess but I hate how all the NPCs and technology look.

Every female NPC has the same butch lesbian haircut and every man will all have the same face too with maybe some stupid steampunk cosplay looking ass mustache on their face. This game aesthetically looks like a redditor's wet dream. How the fuck did Obsidian manage to make every NPC look so ugly and all look the same when they're working with UE4?! It's genuinely insane.

This game is one of the most forgettable games I've ever played in my entire life. The only reason people still talk about this game is because its made by Obsidian and they made New Vegas (the best game ever) even though barely any of the original devs that worked on New Vegas actually worked on Outer Worlds.

My favorite thing about Lonesome Road is probably all the items and weapons. Otherwise, this is definitely the weakest New Vegas DLC. There's literally no NPC interaction besides ED-E and Ulysses and even though Ulysses is cool conceptually I don't really find his motives realistic and I feel like trying to get the player to step back and feel bad for actions that they've never done in person or were forced to do to forward the game's story is lame.

I've never really heard of anyone being a Ulysses defender, he's just carried by his cool ass voice but all he does is spew nihilistic psychobabble bullshit lol.

I liked ED-E's backstory though, I thought it was cute.

ENG: I'm not going to elaborate too much because it's not a game that deserves it. Its standardization of gameplay mechanics more similar to those of a generic Call of Duty were justly vilified at the time as much as its rancid humor. On that I agree. What I disagree on, which was said at the time, is the belief that this was REALLY the saga, a thing of the past that as of today is outdated. But no, Duke Nukem is not at all what is shown in Forever. Playably it was innovative, powerful, ingenious, and Duke Nukem as a character was a genuinely funny stereotype of 80s Hollywood action movies. Forever never seems to understand either the mechanics or the Duke character as such. If you played this horrifying piece of garbage, and were left with only this, I recommend you give the original a look. Because this is not Duke Nukem, never was and never will be.

ESP: No me voy a explayar mucho porque no es un juego que lo merezca. Su estandarización de mecánicas jugables más similares a las de un Call of Duty genérico fueron justamente vilipendiadas en su momento tanto como su humor rancio. En eso estoy de acuerdo. En lo que no estoy de acuerdo, que en su momento se dijo, es la creencia de que esto era REALMENTE la saga, una cosa del pasado que a día de hoy está desfasada. Pero no, Duke Nukem para nada es lo que se muestra en Forever. Jugablemente era innovador, potente, ingenioso, y Duke Nukem como personaje era un estereotipo genuinamente gracioso de las películas de acción hollywoodenses de los 80s. Forever nunca parece entender ni a las mecánicas, ni al personaje de Duke como tal. Si jugaste a este bodrio horripilante, y te quedaste solo con esto, te recomiendo que le des un vistazo al original. Porque esto no es Duke Nukem, nunca lo fue ni lo será.

As someone who enjoyed Ion Fury and Ion Fury: Aftershock, I was really excited at the reveal of Phantom Fury. It captures the visuals of a late 90s/early 2000s FPS. Regardless of what I have to say about it later, it absolutely nailed its graphical style.

I played the Phantom Fury demo in anticipation and in the nicest way possible, I would be fucking embarrassed if I was the one to release a demo in that state. I was hoping that they would delay the game to iron out its glaring issues and a lot of people felt the same way, then they announced that the game would be released 6 months later. From there I went in with very low expectations.

Phantom Fury is a skinwalker taking the identity of Half-Life 1 and 2 alongside the early builds of Duke Nukem Forever. With its nostalgic visuals, it hides such a blatantly unfinished, buggy and half-assed game inside that's trying to lure you in based on its looks, vibes and its John Blade cameo, because kids these days totally know what SiN is and who this John Blade guy is when he only appears for 30 seconds. While I don't agree with people calling Phantom Fury the new generation Blood 2 (because I would gladly replay this over Blood 2 any day of the week), if people are making those comparisons, you've seriously fucked up.

Phantom Fury wants to be Half-life 1 and 2 so badly, its got all the set pieces like a jeep section, except the jeep is a Halo Warthog that controls like a drunken ice skater, with instances of cars shooting at you with rockets like in the Water Hazard chapter. Its got helicopter fights like in Surface Tension, except they don't work here because the AI is beyond stupid. You can replicate Half-Life's set pieces all you like, it's not a substitute for good level design. It's like the game is jangling keys at you trying to jog your nostalgia for a much better game while you play this slog. The levels range from desert region to tech-base and that's all there is to it. I get that the game is trying to invoke that feeling again, but it's 2024, we don't need all these physics-based puzzles in here like the technology for that stuff hasn't been around for 20 years. The level structure constantly goes through an identity crisis. Phantom Fury can't decide whether it wants to be a linear narrative experience, or a classic key hunt with excessive backtracking through the same looking hallways that you will get lost in because there is no sense of direction. Maybe instead of adding in all those quirky environmental interactions so you hopefully tug at people's nostalgia, you instead devoted that time into some better level design.

Onto the combat, it's so weightless like in the demo. Yeah they added in proper gibbing but nothing packs a punch, the automatic weapons feel like staplers and the shotguns feel like a gentle sneeze. The bowling bombs are so unreliable and bounced off enemies most of the time that I ended up never using them towards the end, the Motherflakker reloads too slowly for it to be useful as a crowd clearing weapon, the Ion Bow feels like a shell of its former self and instead of its very useful alt-fire, RMB is now for aiming down the sights like in Half-Life because why? Once again the Loverboy got the most use out of me, even if its lock on alt-fire feels slower, less snappy and has this annoying bug where it can lock on to props such as laptops. Seriously, how does this shit even make it into the final product? You can buy weapon mods for some of your guns. Yes, only a few weapons have purchasable mods. It's like they never finished the full weapon mod line-up. The weapons that do get mods though either have two or only one and it just feels unfinished. Am I supposed to believe that the standard shotgun was only gonna come with ONE weapon mod whereas that foam gun I never used came with two, and the fucking Ion Bow gets NO mods?

Enemies barely flinch or react to getting shot and when they die, they just ragdoll awkwardly. I'm not talking Painkiller ragdolls where enemies are sent flying across arenas in a satisfying way, I'm talking Source engine ragdolls that collapse onto themselves when you unfreeze them with the physics gun in Gmod. Enemies are on the spongey side and the game's way of making them difficult is to just send 20 of them bunched up in your direction, tanking your frame rate in the process. It also doesn't help that the AI is dumb as shit. Sometimes they take cover in the open, most of the time they get stuck on level geometry, and a frighteningly common occurrence were enemies just stand around doing nothing as if I'm not even there. I played this game on Hard and it felt so inconsistent. Sometimes the game would just freely give you health, armour and ammo for an hour for really basic fights, then it'll pull some insane resource conservation shit onto you during the tougher fights.

The story is laughably bad. Why is Shelly siding with the GDF again? They're acting like nothing happened in Aftershock. The Colonel just becomes a twist villain as he betrays you out of nowhere and after killing him, you have to fight ANOTHER FUCKING TWIST VILLAIN that comes way out of left-field and makes no sense. The game tries really hard to make you feel bad for Shelly, but it doesn't work when you hamfist her "tragic" past and trauma to the player and then she gets over it in a single anti-climatic cutscene.

I can't believe I paid $32 fucking Australian dollars for this unfocused, undercooked mess. I fucking gave Slipgate Ironworks and modern day 3D Realms my hard-earned money for this shit. I got Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Graven from a cheap bundle and finished their early access campaigns ages ago and I'm terrified on what those games have become on their full releases when I eventually replay them.

I do not recommend Phantom Fury and to 3D Realms/Slipgate Ironworks, you guys gotta pull your shit together, because acting all pissy and childish towards reviewers in private who rightfully criticised your unfinished product that you gave out early copies for is not gonna fix this. Don't bite the hands that feed you.

It may not be the most expansive or the most refined but I think Fallout 1 is probably overall the most consistent Fallout game. It's so damn good.

Fallout's world and storytelling is so well thought out and intriguing that it'd make you think that when Interplay made this game, they knew for certain that it would become a popular franchise. You can tell how much effort and detail was put into every facet of NPCs and locations within the game.

That and also the iconic and terrifying soundtrack by Mark Morgan doing all of the OST with the almost clay-like CGI, gritty aesthetic of the game really makes it so unique and truly an alive world.

Despite how gritty and desolate the world seems in this game, I truly appreciate that it isn't this freshly nuked desert with nothing but crazy raiders running around with random junk like Bethesda seems to love. All the major locations in this game have actual infrastructure with agriculture, larger town centers, homes and everything, not just a bunch of scrappy shantytowns. The first area in the game that you encounter after you leave Vault 13, being Shady Sands is the best example of this with a clear farm and an entirely crafted created adobe architecture of all the buildings despite being so remote from the rest of the major locations like The Hub and Junktown.

Despite the simplicity in the story, I love it so much. I love coming freshly out of the vault and you basically directly assume the position as a vault dweller seeing this new world, learning about all these different factions and a growing army of mutants who want to take over the wasteland. Again, it does such a good job at giving bread crumbs for the player to follow and get drip fed new information about the world.

My only issues with this game come to a few things. For example, the game has a few oversights and glitches that can make playthroughs where you wanna mess around with stuff a bit annoying. From what I know, the fallout 1 in 2 mod fixes a lot of these bugs and unintended gameplay issues.

Another example is the combat can feel a bit unforgiving and start to spike weirdly in different areas where it really shouldn't. It's happens more near the end of the game but it still can happen early on. An example of this would be in an area like The Hub where you can pretty much get every quest there done easily around the same level except for the one house with the guys holding the BoS initiate captive, they somehow absolutely destroy you unless you come all the way back there after getting power armor and better guns way later into the game.

This is more of a subjective complaint because some people may like this because it gives the game a better sense of flow, but I feel like in this specific case, it feels a bit confusing and jarring.

The final big thing is just an issue with a ton of older games that are a bit more esoteric compared to games we're used to now. The game doesn’t really do the good job explaining how to play it. This is an issue with a lot of older games that rely on manuals and strategy guides to teach the player how to play.

This game fuckin' rocks though, I really appreciate it and after completing it, it's given me even more appreciation for the Fallout series.