one of the best games i've played in a long ass time. the PvE experience allows arrowhead to build a set of game rules unlike none other. most multiplayer games have friendly fire disabled, it's not fun losing to another group of people just because someone wasn't paying attention. helldivers 2 on the other hand, embraces human error. you will absolutely call down orbital bombardments on people standing too close, and they have to haul ass while being shot at in every direction. that's what's fun about it! the lack of boundaries and exceptions for how a gun works or what causes damage means everything is so much more open for the player to have fun.

it's also really awesome to see the movement mechanics from metal gear solid V make their way in here. MGSV isn't everyone's favorite, it's true, but the gameplay was super fun and let people come up with all kinds of unique play styles that worked to a player's advantage.

the setting is awesome, the music is awesome, the stratagems are great. helldivers 2 is a genuine innovation for video games as a whole.

hopefully the success of this brings back AA video games, we clearly need more

the movie suits are bullshit, the miles costume at the end is the ugliest shit ive ever seen, the side missions have been reduced significantly, all those cool powers you got with purchasing new suits are gone. despite what i can assume is sony's insertion of marvel comics level synergy, insomniac manages to create a sequel that improves on almost everything from the first game. the story is darker, the map is bigger, the threats are bigger.

the symbiote suit is exactly what i wanted it to be, extremely powerful upgrades that you don't want to get rid of. you just plow through dudes way quicker than you could with those spider-arms, and the only thing that changes is everything else. great game.

it works as an open world looter shooter but absolutely fails in the RPG genre. fallout is no longer about creating your own unique character and learning about the world after a nuclear holocaust. instead you're playing the character bethesda wants you to play. it's a step up from your dad being the main protagonist instead of you, but the freedom choice put into the role-playing element has been swept off the map like the human societies before the bombs fell.

due to the voiced protagonist, dialogue options are now extremely limited, likely due to the workload something like this can create. the sarcasm button is just cringy and lame 90% of the time. you're supposed to be this lost parent and it's giving you dialogue that makes you sound fourteen years old. not only that, but the very few dialogue options you do get either lead to the same response from the NPC anyways, and give you zero information.

there's also this weird belittling by a lot of the game's characters in terms of explaining stuff. there's dialogue options that might let you ask a question or inquire about something and a lot of the answers are "you're too stupid to understand it, just do this thing and you'll be fine". like jeez, sorry for wanting to learn about scientific breakthroughs and details about the world around me in your OPEN WORLD ROLE PLAYING GAME

oh and then there's the actual speech checks. quick recap. the speech skill you can invest points into is a fallout staple and gave you more dialogue options in the interplay isometric titles, but never told you which option was better. fallout 3 speech skills are a coin flip, which is a terrible idea for a game that has a quicksave option. new vegas fixed this by making the skill checks dependent on a level, but also let some checks get passed with other skills (barter, medicine, guns, etc.). fallout 4 has completely removed skills altogether, and the coin flip speech checks are back, but they're dependent on the Charisma stat.

what's really funny about this change is you can max out charisma at the start of fallout 4 and never lose a conversation. what makes this better is that the speech options you get are terrible. it's so badly implemented that one option you get boils down to

"hey have are you going to do this thing yet"
"absolutely not. there's no way in hell that's going to happen"
[SPEECH CHECK] "okay but have you thought about it tho"
"actually now that you mention it, no i have not. tell them i'll get right to work"

it's a con that these dialogue options are so lazy and offer little aside from completing a task you don't want to do, but it's also pretty hilarious to see these roughened and experienced wastelanders just immediately folding to the most basic inquiries ever.


the story. holy fuck it's bad. fallout 4 started development before 3 was even finished, having been worked on for seven years. and in that time frame, no one asked "what should be the motivation of our bad guy". a question you definitely want to ask in your big budget open-world RPG, especially one where it's a bad guy group you can join and learn more about. your character is essentially given multiple factions to side with in the course of the story. a brotherhood of steel chapter that are just straight up nazis, second hand embarrassment harriet tubman, one-dimensional good guys that are in it for the good fight, and scientists that want to abduct people.

i think it's safe to say the institute is the worst written faction fallout has ever received. like what a fucking embarrassment. bethesda gets to make their original bad guy after recycling both the brotherhood of steel and the enclave in fallout 3, and they dropped the ball off the grand canyon. how synths work is all over the place. they could be so deeply infiltrated that they don't even know they're synths, or they just know right from the getgo and tell you they're keeping a low profile like a dumbass spy. there's so many characters inside the institute itself but all they ever tell you is how nice it is to be in a clean lab or why making robots is important, WHICH OF COURSE, YOU NEVER GET ANYTHING ELSE OUTSIDE OF "THEY'RE IMPORTANT"

unfortunately for me, i have 388 hours in fallout 4 so i can't really say i didn't have fun. the gunplay is a big improvement from both 3 and new vegas and makes things really satisfying. i think the boston commonwealth is pretty fun to explore, and there are some pretty fun side quests you can stumble across. the guns no longer break, so it's a little more fun to just carry around a couple of firearms.

the settlements. some people love em, others hate em. i didn't care much for them, but i do appreciate that bethesda tried to add a feature for the hundreds of fallout fans that are just hoarders for junk, so now all those objects are more than just things you sell to a trader or window dressing for vault levels. the sim settlements mod is pretty damn fun tho, and a must play for anyone that likes settlements but doesn't want to build six hundred crappy wooden huts for those lazy ass settlers.

companions have also greatly been improved. some of the characters are pretty generic, but they're surprisingly diverse in play style. of course there's the dog, but there's also a super mutant, a mr handy that you left behind for 200 years (lol), a brotherhood of steel paladin, a noir detective synth that's also the best character bethesda has ever written, a journalist, a mercenary, a cage fighter, and the most bland and annoying mf on the planet. i really like how they'll interact with other companions, and you can bring them with you on the DLCs and they'll have dialogue to reflect what's going on (if you play far harbor, bring nick valentine, it's worth it).

overall if you're getting into this game because it's fun to shoot things and you enjoy open world exploration, i'd say it's worth the low price it's selling at. however you want a worthy follow up to fallout new vegas or any kind of western RPG with thought put into it's world outside of aesthetic and who you're shooting at, look elsewhere.

actually insane how good this is. my jaw dropped when i realized bethesda gave me a moral dilemma where i had to stop and think about what the best choice was. it wasn't a no brainer like the entirety of the base game, far harbor's narrative decisions are ones that test your personal concepts of right and wrong.

not only that, but it manages to completely flip a baffling narrative choice into a positive . dima asks the sole survivor if they're a synth, and since your character's origin has been prematurely decided by bethesda , it's an answer you genuinely don't have an answer to. the synth mystery here isn't immediately solved by shooting them and seeing if they have a component. you don't get clear answers and you have to use your best judgement to find the truth! it's amazing!

the mysteries of far harbor are intriguing, shocking, and only escalate from your arrival. definitely check this one out. only reason it isn't five stars is cause those dima puzzles suck ass and my game crashed on one, which meant i had to start all over.

gotham knights is the kind of game that makes you wish you were playing something else. the combat is really dull, the performance is ass, the enemy balance is absolutely terrible (it used to be even worse, but a patch made the game's hard difficulty much more doable) and even the dynamics between your team members is something eidos montreal did much much better in their guardians of the galaxy game.

the main selling point for this game is without a doubt, co-op. it's pretty fun, but I often ran into crashes or disconnects, and the balancing is just....ehhhhhhhhh.

a part of this game involves playing as batgirl in an open-world gotham and beating the shit out of people, so part of me is going to love it no matter what. i personally believe if this game ditched the loot gear/RPG shenanigans (c'mon, no comic book outfits?? there's so many fun and appealing designs in the batfamily, but there's only one set that aims towards that direction), focused more on combat, and made it less of a grind, I think this game could've been really fun.

if this game goes on sale for $15 or something, then maybe check it out? but full price, fuck that.

only technical problems i came across was the opening credits being super slow to load in, idk what that's about but even then i still wasn't a fan of this one. i dumped three to four weeks of my life into xcom 2 so i was very interested in this, but this game just doesn't stick the landing. 75% of this game just feels like a waste of time, sorry but i'm just not interested in befriending marvel characters with some of the least funny quippy dialogue i've ever heard (seriously if you thought those forspoken scenes were bad, just you wait). when you're not doing socializing with your 'bros', you're playing a lame as fuck card game.

i've definitely got a bias here cause i do not give a shit about deck building. that being said tho, i also despise turn based combat, but xcom had superb customization, fun mechanics, an interesting story, amazing mod support, and a lot of padding to make it something so much more. i was really hoping firaxis would get me to like card game mechanics the same way they got me to like turn-based combat, but i just wasn't having fun. the thing separating the magic the gathering tournament is this 'hang out the house with your buddies' system that just has no soul in any of it. i wasn't remotely interested in ANY of the characters, all of 'em seemed so two-dimensional. plus the actual context on why those specific marvel characters were doing what they were doing felt lackluster. the only one i'd want to hang out with is blade, who's voiced by black dynamite himself, michael jai white.

they even bring back the photo mode from xcom 2 war of the chosen, but it's actually worse! it gives you the option to make comic covers instead of propaganda posters. i fucking love comics and for the most part, it delivers, but guess what, you can't write your own text. you have to pick from a list of marvel comics code authority approved titles, and they're about as lame as it gets.

long story short, card combat isn't very interesting, and neither is the epic wholesome 100 friendship stuff surrounding it. i'm going back to xcom 2

i'll admit, i've been playing this game a lot. i'm having fun with the 5v5 stuff, the new heroes are nice, there's some nice maps, etc. i really like the overwatch lineup and there's new interactions between all the characters, some of which you need very specific circumstances to make happen. it's pretty cool. that being said tho, the positives and fun i've had are overshadowed by the fact that overwatch 1 is completely unplayable now, and the absolutely god awful store that would make r/gaming cream.

if you decide to play this game, please, please, please do not buy anything. the prices are absolutely absurd, and it's fueled by pure greed. legendary skins can cost as much as the first game, and sometimes they're just repackaging skins from OW1. i've been playing this game for weeks and i still can't get over how blizzard has made people miss loot boxes. it's even more disgusting when players that earned legendary skins from OW1 can now be seen as people who just caved in and encourage new players to purchase from the store.

what makes this different from OW1 is in that game i managed to get plenty of good cosmetics for my character, and i never had to spend an additional dime. everything i unlocked, i earned by leveling up and playing the game. this game however does not give a shit about you and if you want that nice skin on the loading, cough up $20 bucks to help pay for activision-blizzard's sexual harassment lawsuit, or fuck off.

i'm not going to write this and pretend you're going to make a difference by not buying anything. i've seen too many of the instant unlock skins from the premium battle pass that it's already fucked, but if you don't give them money, you'll be able to sleep at night.

addtional note. if you're thinking "well if you don't like it, then just don't buy it", go fuck yourself. i would normally agree with that statement, but overwatch 1 has been removed from existence, this is it, this fucked up greedy system is all that's left. blizzard's decision solidifies they don't care about longevity, just whatever makes them a quick buck. player count is already dropping, and if they don't make a turnaround soon, it's going to get a lot worse.

i wanna say i have mixed feelings about this game, but whenever arkham knight pops up in my head, my brain is filled with thoughts on why this game is ass. the graphics are really beautiful, and the core mechanics of this previous game are still intact, giving some good combat & invisible predator sections from time to time. it can be a fun game, and if you celebrate it as one, then i hold nothing against you.

however as a sequel to arkham city and arkham asylum, arkham knight fails to live up to the elevation that rocksteady studios once delivered on batman titles. the new inclusion is the batmobile, but it ends up creating more problems that hurt this game real bad. there are moments with the car that are very fun, chasing APCs and humvees on the streets is really great, and if that was the primary focus of batmobile stuff, i'd be down for it. unfortunately, half this game is your bat-tank shooting unmanned drones to protect an empty street or something

the art style in arkham knight is full of discrepancies that most of the screenshots for this game just ends up being this big mush of brown. gotham city has this feeling of an old city with a large history being built over with tech from the modern world. great! but the cars look like they're stuck in 1970, and it just doesn't match the mood set in previous arkham titles

the story is balls. it's just 'everyone gets kidnapped' the game. idk what they did to get paul dini skipping this title, but i can tell they didn't exactly succeed his work. the arkham knight character is probably the most sorry excuse for an original villain i've seen. there were clearly two stories here, rocksteady wanted to write one of them really really bad, the other they didn't really care for.

so yeah i'd say this game can occupy your time pretty well, there's plenty of attention to detail, and it's definitely fun. sadly, it just doesn't come close to arkham city's use of the batman mythos

boy i have a lot to say about this one. no it isn't about bugs, my favorite game fallout: new vegas crashes every thirty seconds while you try to run up a hill so i don't really care for 'playability'. my issue is that this game is underwhelming in so many levels, the NCPD AI is a joke (actually so is the rest of the game come to think of it), there's no RPG elements, the game introduces all these cool factions and groups and they only exist as things to shoot at, the driving sucks, the shooting is okay, the minimap is too zoomed in so you constantly ram your car into everyone on accident

the writing is pretty great though, and the characters are really interesting, if you liked Witcher 3 for it's writing like i did, then this should be right up your alley. The game is also really beautiful when it isn't taking a dump on your graphics card, sometimes i'd just stop driving to just look at the stuff all around me, that look of cyberpunk is just unbeatable compared to anyone else