Deserves a lot better than to be called a "joke game" as the devs very clearly put in some effort to make this a game that's actually enjoyable to play. It's not bad (despite making me want to play Sayonara Wild Hearts instead) but despite being consistently engaging, it's never really fully fun. It starts off a little too slow - I can imagine a lot of people dropping this before all the mechanics have been fully revealed. The controls are a little too stiff for my liking. The music carries about half the experience - the tracks are all good, but most of them don't really fit the atmosphere of the game very well. There are a couple tracks here that sound like they would fit into the original OutRun soundtrack and those are by far the best fit - they're still funky enough to fit into this game's overall aesthetic but upbeat enough to fit the pace of everything that's going on on-screen.

All in all it's a solid game, but I wouldn't encourage anyone to go out of their way to pick this one up. If you're just looking for a chill game that plays like an endless runner then this should be your cup of tea - grab it while it's on sale.

A mesmerizing game at its best. The first few missions are such a slog, given that your starter trucks think of shallow mud as if it were glue, but getting a truck that can haul things over terrain with actual obstacles allows this game to show off how fun it can be.

It's a little bare in terms of gameplay elements - it really is just "deliver thing to place" - but the actual logistics of getting thing X to place Y turns this simple act of traversal into a puzzle, making this much more comparable to Death Stranding than SCS's Truck Sim games. It's a shame that the game is either ludicrously easy or really hard once you acquire a few trucks, with no real in-between. This means that the only real factor is "can your truck grip the terrain and/or winch itself along", which doesn't completely nullify the fun in the game, but I rarely feel like I need to use more than 4-5 of the 60+ vehicles in the game.

All in all it's still an enjoyable game that allows you to engage your brain a bit without being an overly stressful or action-packed experience. I'm not really big into them myself but I imagine this is peak "podcast game" material. My suggestion is to Cheat Engine in a small amount of money so the hump at the beginning is a little smaller, and you can get to the meat of the experience a little faster - you won't exactly be robbing yourself of the feeling of progression either, as most of the content is still locked behind levels.

Seemingly a pretty barebones system that unfolds beautifully as you play any mode other than the default 1v1 duels. These alternate modes take the little dance of one-hit-kill ducking, dodging, and shoving and ask that you apply all of them to create situations where you "fight fairly" as infrequently as possible - pushing enemies into one another, ducking under an enemy's attack that then hits their ally, deliberately whiffing an attack so that the blood on your sword flies into their face, blinding them. You pick up the basics during the 60-second tutorial, and everything afterward is about feeling out your playstyle and refining the execution: learning when you can punish a greedy attack with a similar greedy defensive option, learning to bait out and punish a charge attack, etc. There's a large list of games that could leave you with deja vu (people have mentioned Bushido Blade, Nidhogg, Hotline Miami, Sclash) but I'm not here to dock points for a familiar premise when the game delivers on its promise like this.

I played this game start to finish in one sitting, and yet I can't really rate it that highly. The real "content" in this game is unlocking new tools for destroying spiders and the controls are just a teensy bit too clunky to fully enjoy all of them (guns especially feel just a tad too inaccurate). There are a lot of challenges though, for those that want them - there are always enough easy ones that you can pass the level with relatively little effort, but the more involved ones can be quite difficult, especially as the game goes on.

20 USD for this (full price) feels a little bit steep, but the current Winter Sale price of $9 feels like a good deal for what you're getting, assuming you're not a completionist. You can also easily play this while watching youtube videos, as you don't really need any audio cues and there's nothing time-sensitive. This is the kind of thing I look for when I'm buying casual games.

Little tiny bite-sized tragedies, each one a treat in its own right. The sections connecting these vignettes give away the game a bit, and it's not like each story is treading new narrative ground, but as a free 90-minute game from a two-person team it's punching well above its weight class. I love a lot about this, especially the historical setting that doesn't get enough love in gaming. Nothing sells me on a game like firing it up and seeing "1929, Central Asia".

If nothing else, this game deserves your time for the second act alone. If that were released as its own game I'd be giving it a 10.

EDIT: i don't really like this review! i'm currently working through a replay of the entire series and hopefully i'll be inspired to put out something a little better than this after i do so.

Sure, it's fine. It's made better by the fact that you are presumably playing this after Y3 - a game where the combat consists of you burning everything in your arsenal to get the enemy to stop fucking blocking for one second jesus christ only for them to knock you down.

The four protagonists in this is an interesting move, but each of them only gets a couple chapters in the spotlight before the story's over, which lends the game a feeling of "Okay now quick! Look over here!" Some do better than others - you start the game with Akiyama, a character that outshines even Kiryu with his magnetism, only to switch to Saejima, who is a downright charisma vacuum. Despite having one of the more interesting stories, Saejima is a real one-note character and both his combat and his personality take the wind out of the story's sails for all but a single dramatic moment during his campaign. Kiryu himself is probably the least interesting he's been in any entry so far, so in retrospect it's probably better that they didn't try to write him into this story at an earlier point.

The different combat styles of each protagonist keep things relatively fresh, but can also be a source of frustration. I didn't have that much difficulty switching from the fast Akiyama to the slower Saejima, but that doesn't mean that it was pleasant at all to play. And may God help you during Tanimura's part of the four-part final boss, a fight so terrible that I want to go back to fighting Jingu to see if it's actually worse or if I'm just remembering the Jingu fight too fondly in comparison.

Anyway, about the real game: there are a ton of karaoke songs but you can't really play them until 10-15 hours in when you get Kiryu. Akiyama and Kiryu both do excellent versions of "Pure Love in Kamurocho", and Kiryu gets a "Machine Gun Kiss," which is the best karaoke song in the entire series. Saejima can't do karaoke at all, and Tanimura can only do two or three songs (the ones with backup portions, he doesn't sing). I appreciate Kiryu having like thirty goddamn songs, RGG Studios, but what's up with that?

If this shift in the series is a result of Unity and Syndicate underperforming commercially, then I'm glad they failed. This shift towards an RPG format seems to have prompted Ubisoft to start investing some time into their characters as well, and it's paid off with the most interesting main character since Ezio.

Assassin's Creed has always excelled at creating incredible open worlds that make me take an interest in the history of a place I didn't previously care about. They've managed to do it again here, but Bayek carries this fucking game on his shoulders. A story beginning with a parent losing a child has a chance to fall really flat with players who can't relate, but it's written extremely well and it makes Bayek feel far more human than earlier AC protags, who feel much closer to superheroes than anything else.

The writing does a lot of the work, but Abubakar Salim puts in an excellent performance here to bring Bayek to life - it's a combination of the two that makes it believable. You understand what his values are without needing to be beaten over the head, and you can see through his interactions with children when he's reminded of his own son, without needing some hallucination or flashback to spell it out. Bayek very often feels like a man held together by ideals and duct tape and that's what sucks me in.

I know a lot of people were turned off by the shift towards RPG-lite mechanics and to be honest, they're alright here, but they're definitely half-baked in comparison to Odyssey. There are times where the difficulty between missions spikes a little too much and it feels like you're meant to level grind since these are sudden jumps, as opposed to a slow-growing gap between player level and mission level. The system of having multiple bows is a little weird and feels kinda clunky at times, and I basically just ignored one of them for about half the playthrough.

Moving away from paired animations makes the combat feel exhilarating at times, and the hitboxes match up pretty well to what's going on on-screen (I don't know how they fucked this up so bad in Valhalla after getting it right two games in a row). Aside from the sections where it feels like you're meant to level grind, the combat is generally challenging without feeling unfair and watching the Phylakes turn from a genuine roaming threat into juicy sacks of loot is a satisfying change.

All in all, Ubisoft very clearly put work into this game and the result isn't perfect, but they made some pretty dramatic changes to their flagship franchise and managed to create something worthwhile. Some of the changes that I think worked well for Origins don't work so well for later games (looting tombs was neat for Egypt and not so cool in Ancient England), but I'm really happy that Ubisoft decided to try something new when they could have just raked in the cash by shitting out another AC game that was 5% different from the last one. I think some of the things I liked most about Origins won't return to the series for a while, so I'll let the rest of you enjoy the newer games as they hone this formula - Origins is my own personal flash in the pan.

this game can't make up its mind re: how badly it wants to be Siege. it's not an awful game, i don't hate it, but all of its most prominent strengths - the gunplay, the operator variety, etc. - all of them are Siege exports. all of its biggest drawbacks come from changes made for this new game mode (because let's be honest, that's what this is).

some operators have interesting changes made to their abilities for this, some are just pasted in wholesale. the operators here seem to be selected based on popularity instead of utility - there's virtually no reason to ever use Fuze or Hibana, and there's no sign of operators that would be far more useful here: Ying, Lesion, etc. guns that were changed for the PvP of Siege are virtually useless here - any especially rapid-firing SMG is unusable due to recoil - it's a much greater issue when you're up against more than five opponents and are spraying most of your bullets into the wall.

weirdly though, i do keep coming back. the game gets the noggin joggin' a lot more than it ever was during Siege's Outbreak event (the thing that inspired this whole shindig). the sprawl seems kind of tedious when starting out but becomes a genuine issue at higher difficulties when you realize it makes everything else more threatening by merely existing. wrangling randos towards an objective can suck in ways multiplayer is always capable of, but the satisfaction of working with them to reach ever-higher Maelstrom Protocol ranks is real, although hard to convey. watching someone you just met brave a horrifying wave of enemies, risking their own operator's death just to help you recover yours is always heartwarming (not a word i thought i would use in a review for a Tim Clunky game).

the short version of this review is that this is very, very obviously for people who like the strong skeleton Siege has (with its operators and satisfying gun mechanics) but want a PvE game built on this chassis. it reminds me a bit of the kind of fun i got from playing Vermintide 2, effectively a horde mode where the horde itself is a credible threat (and not just fodder). all in all? i do like the game, it's fun in a completely different way from normal Siege. i'm a little mad at myself though for paying Forty United States Dollars for this (sponsored by White Claw Surge™) - if you're interested in this, definitely wait until it's on sale or try it through game pass if you're already subbed. i think you're much more likely to find an experience that's worth the money this way. strong 6 to low 7/10.

It's impossible (read: I'm not going to the effort) to find out if I'm remembering this correctly, but the first time I played this, it was already a one-joke game that starts to wear on your patience by using the same trick repeatedly over too many levels. This was (if I remember correctly!) before the in-game President became a store-brand Donald Trump.

Revisiting this after that change is difficult. It's still the same game based on a single gimmick, but the Trump jokes are unbearable because they're so fucking lazy and played out. These are all "orange man bad" level gags, and while I would generally agree with the sentiment behind "orange man bad", it's not going to carry a game - in fact, it's already aging like milk. This isn't even mentioning the weird "gays are gross" elements of the Putin jokes? Come on, man.

You'll probably notice I haven't really mentioned the gameplay much, and that's because it's pretty rudimentary. It was forgettable to begin with due to over-reliance on its gimmick. By adding in references to real-life politics, they've set off that part of my brain that reminds me that politics isn't a joke - real people will live their entire lives in squalor because of decisions politicians have made on their behalf. While that's not to say that politics is a sacred cow nobody should touch, it prompts me to take this game seriously, at which point I realize - the gameplay kinda sucks, the humor really sucks... and why am I doing this to myself?

The game's biggest flaw definitely comes from an underutilization of the Play As Anyone mechanic - make the characters distinct! Characters do not have meaningful shortcomings or strengths because they are either insignificant to start, or mitigated by the environment (spiderbot machines and cargo drone launch pads). Let me fail! The game is relatively easy as-is, but the fact that you aren't allowed to challenge yourself with weak characters (or a character with a strange specialization) means that the "Play As Anyone" system feels more like you're playing somewhere between 1 and 5 different characters with 50 different faces. It's a shame too, because the gameplay is decently engaging, and could be moreso if the characters you play felt different. There is a willingness to explore by adding a new mechanic, but no willingness to allow that mechanic to meaningfully impact how you play the game (or to allow the setting to change the game by maybe making guns harder to find?).

About the politics in the game: the game itself is sort of wishy-washy with its politics when it comes to things you're going to see during the course of the main story - vague allusions to "resistance," "taking things back for the people," and Bagley's jokes about "fascist school". The in-game radio shows, however, tell you the kind of weak lib shit you're meant to believe, though - that our current media landscape prizes misinformation in order to get clicks and keep you engaged, that this landscape is perfect for authoritarians to take root, but also that nothing needs to meaningfully change. It's good actually to have clickbaity news you can't trust! It teaches you to be critical (note: if you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you)! These are actual points from the game! Despite this very obvious downside to modern media that has been actually exploited in-universe to put authoritarians in power, there's nothing you can really do about the media ecosystem - you can always trust the current version of the BBC (or GBB in-game) to uh, give you fair, unbiased news that you can trust, and if authoritarians abuse this system and take over? Well, the people have to rise up of course, to restore their classic British freedoms and a capitalist democracy. If Far Cry 5 is the beer commercial version of America, this is its British equivalent.

(The audiolog I was citing can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM4UfadGDkg)

This is one of those cases where I'm much more harsh than the score would justify because the game that exists is overshadowed by what it wants to be.

From what I can see, this game's flaws are some of the most famous things about it at this point, and justifiably so - the dull gameplay, the way it smugly berates you for merely playing the game, the ham-fisted messaging. I feel like it's harder to see past the flaws now, since nobody playing in 2021 is coming in blind.

I still have a special place in my heart for this game because I remember having no prior exposure and being pleasantly surprised, but the need to come in blind betrays the fact that the game relies a lot on its twists as opposed to any serious examination of its own themes. You will never successfully guilt me for playing a video game the way it was intended, and I think the devs overplayed their hand a bit in responding that you can "just stop playing" if you didn't want to be railroaded into doing shitty things. It makes the game feel like a set of shallow "gotcha!" moments - trying to demonstrate that virtual violence is a real problem by making you do shitty things and then calling you out for doing them. There are impactful ways to make this point and this isn't one of them.

Despite being the second FPS retelling of Heart of Darkness in 3 years, the story is genuinely interesting when it's not trying to antagonize the player. It spends so much time trying to do that, though, that it shoots itself in the foot, and the gameplay that's left over is NOT good enough to carry the rest of the experience - and don't tell me that's the point, because if they deliberately made the combat weaker because of ~themes~ they wouldn't have included a multiplayer mode where you can tear shit up with your pals.