Where did 822 hours go? Gwent is simple in it's basic form: win the best of 3 rounds by having the biggest score at the end of each round. After that, it gets more complex but it's not a hard game to understand, really. And the visuals...there's no other card game that comes close. The cards are works of art and when you get them in animated form you get to see them in their purest glory (and that doesn't even consider the voice work that goes with each card - in mulitple languages). You can spend money on this game if you want (and I have many times on 'ornaments' - that is, cosmetic improvements to the game, be that leaders skins, new boards to play on, etc.) but it's not necessary to advance; it has the reputation as the least pay-to-win card game out there and IMO that is an accurate and warranted description. You can play competitively or casually, though really there's no down sound to playing the ladder. It's not the Gwent that's in Witcher 3, it's been changed through years of development, and it's now a far superior version of the Witcher 3 mini-game. It costs nothing to download and try. Give it a go and immerse yourself once again in the Witcher universe.
It's not Mafia 1 redone in the 60's which Mafia 1 players think makes this game bad. This is not a bad game. It's actually a great game, it's just not Mafia 1 in the 1960s; it's not a chapter-by-chapter game with a few side quests but a much more open world game. There's tons of stuff to do, espcially with the expansions. The plot, story, voice acting, graphics, driving mechanics are all really good. If you're a completionist then it can can be a bit grindy to get everything but that's no different than any other game out there. The protaginist is believable and when you play the game you really want him to succeed - the constant casual racism that you encounter actually really got to me after a while (speaking as a white middle aged man) and I was eventually so incensed that by the end of the game I ached to burn down the system. If I hear one more person call me "Boy" I swear to God... As of Oct 2020 this is on sale. Buy it. It'll take 50+ hours to complete and it'll be worth every penny. The soundtrack is great too (Del Shannon's "Keep Searching" is my favourite).
This game is 15 years old and you have to take that into account when playing. The graphics are no where near today's raytracing efforts. That said, they're still adequate for a FPS. The game is broken down into action elements (where you play the game) and cut scenes (where the overall story is progressed). The real beauty of this game is in the gameplay - if you want to win without losing any of your men you have to embrace the concept of "fix, maneouvre, fire" - use your support team to pin down an enemy group, manoeuvre your fire squad into a position to hit the enemy from the side and then fire on them to wipe them out. It seems simple (and at the start it is) but later in the story it becomes really hard to do as the enemy also shift positions to counter you. The Band of Brothers trilogy of games are the hardest games I've ever played on PC (on the highest difficulty level and with trying to beat the game without losing any of your men to get achievements). Save points are few and far between. You can play half an hour and almost reach your goal and then realise you've lost a man or two. You can continue and forfeit the achievement or go allllll the way back to the last save point. It can be heartbreaking to have to replay a long stretch of the game but finally achieving a progression through the mission without losing anyone is oh so satisfying - it's literally a fist in the air "F@ck yeah!!" moment. It's rare to get that in most of today's games. At just over £1 you can't go wrong in buying this game if you're interested in WWII FPS games. Be prepared for a different experience then the usual "you're the invicible hero" scenarios, though, as you'll need to master how to use your fire and support squads. I've played virtually ever WWII FPS game going and this series remains my favourite despite the years passing. Oh for a Band of Brothers 4 using today's technology....
Less than £10 for all 3 Brothers In Arms games? You'd be mad not to put your money down straight away. These are unlike most WWII FPS games, you aren't the super hero who single-handedly wins the war for the allies. Instead you have to lead a squad composed of an assault and support teams that you direct to attack objectives. How you do that is up to you but following the maxim of "Fix, Flank, Finish" will generally stand you in good stead - get your support team to fix an opponent (the game uses a suppression technique where the enemy has an indicating wheel above their heads - fill up the wheel by attacking them and they stop firing at you for a while as they hunker down to avoid getting killed by your withering attack), get your assault team to flank the enemy and then finish the opponent off with an assault. While this is happening you are still playing an FPS so you can move about however you want - you can help the support team to fix an enemy with covering fire or you can move with your assault squad or, if you want to play the hero, you can hit the enemy on your own and have your team just act as back up. Controls are the usual FPS fare (using iron sights will give you better accuracy) and you can use the usual WWII US army weapons (Garand, BAR, etc) and you can pick up enemy weapons (KAR, MP40, etc) as you go along. The best thing about this series is the fact that you can't help but want to keep all your squad alive - and if you're not careful you WILL lose people). I replayed so many chapters in this game purely because I lost a single guy in a play through and couldn't stand the thought of playing further without them. You have to buy these games, they are the best single player WWII FPS games on the market, even 10 years after their release.
I've played 340+ hours of this game - if that's not a sign of how good it is then I don't know what is. I originally planned to be just a free to play player but in the end I laid down £30 for kegs during closed beta and I consider that a worthwhile investment - this game should cost £30+ but it's free. FREE!! It's not easy, you need to invest some time into figuring out how the game works and how the cards interact with each other. You need to persevere at lower levels to acquire the kegs and ore needed to craft new cards which will make your decks better. The pluses with this game are this: CDPR are very generous with how you acquire new cards - win six rounds and you get 4 new cards (that's rounds, not matches so you don't have to win every game you play) with the chance of some of those cards being very powerful; the card artwork is marvellous - the premium cards are utterly superb and you can get these through normal keg drops or craft them yourself; the community is generally really helpful (see the Reddit channel); and there are loads of Twitch and YouTube channels devoted to it so you can see how really good players play and develop your own decks accordingly (see MegaMogwai, Merchant, McBeard, King Black Toof, Jaggerous, Lifecoach, etc). Essentially, though, the game is just fun to play. Pick a faction, select the cards you want in your deck and then play either Casual or Ranked games. It's ostensibly still in Beta but in reality it's a AAA game already and there's a competitive scene rapidly developing . The best thing is that CDPR listen to their customers - there are regular hotfixes to correct problems (no waiting 6 months for a fix to a broken card) and they communicate regularly (i.e. on Reddit) to answer questions and take criticism...and then they act on that criticism where appropriate. If you had to design a company to run a game then you'd design CDPR; they're great. The game is great now - in the future the game will be even better.
