The Talos Principle 2 has an interesting Premise, and stunning visuals. Sadly, you can't get close to many of the most beautiful buildings and places, they are jus a backdrop with little meaning to the player (though more to the story). It starts a bit slow with confronting you with puzzles, and you can't really break away from the first part without skipping story. The puzzles itself are my biggest gripe with the Talos Principle 2. The developers found quite a few new mechanics to use in puzzles, but then did not progress like the Talos Principle 1, where they got them more and more interwoven, but instead each little Island has a kind of "new mechanic" that you learn from the ground up, and before it gets too difficult, you go off to another island and start anew with a new mechanic. Very few of the base puzzles stopped me very long, most of them I could run through on the first trial, without much thinking. Only the later special puzzles stopped me for longer. Sadly, there also wasn't much of a, for me beloved part, of the Talos Principle 1 - puzzles outside the puzzle, thinking truly outside of the box, connecting different puzzles, bringing parts out, etc. You could sometimes, but it wasn't really necessary except for some of the stars, where you would for others sometimes scour the world for one hidden flame. I still enjoyed it, but the first one burns definitely brighter and stronger.
I found that I really like the new 3D environment and movement, although it is a bit clunky sometimes. Sadly they downgraded the heroes compared to the earlier games, but at least gave Amadeus the ability to fight competently with his boxes and other environemntal objects. The story itself though. Definitely unfinished. There are 3 introductionary levels. And 4 Main Levels. And one boss fight. The game stops when the adventure barely starts. Even the humorous side stories are unfinished.
Skyrim suffers from three big issues: 1.) Its AI is stupid as a log. For example a follower can often get lost, because he can't follow you out over a small step on the river (or some stones downhill), tries to find another way, and for that runs around half the country, And usually getting stuck or sinking in the ground trying that. Other instances would be people talking to you, while someone else hacks you to death. One would guess its a stupid idea to try to kill someone not trying to fight back in front of guards or the ruler. But that rule only is for you, NPCs doing this might just be ignored. 2.) The quest writing often ist done awful Some of those are okay. Some are of a kind, where it seems someone has thrown a handful of "quest ingredients" in a pot, stirred, and called it done. All kind of weird situations come from that, often people talking to you simultanously, you looking for people in wrong spots, because their explanation wasn't clear, etc. Often enough the end of one quest, and the start of the follow up blend in each other. Meaning the first one hasn't really ended, when already an NPC appears, talks over the voice of the one trying to finish the quests and recruits you for the follow up. And you have to do it now. And creative solutions are sometimes possible - or they are not, but you have no idea how to figure that out in advance. 3.) Skyrim has never been subject to any kind of testing. One would think, all the players having played the game would provide that, but quite obvious, most of their reports and experiences have been dumped in the toilet. The game suffers from so many stupidities, its absolutely unthinkable, that the creators themselves have ever played it. Its quite a nice game otherwise. There is good in it. It can be entertaining, But be prepared to be frustrated too. And also be prepared: It is not Morrowind.
Never would have thought I would give a game 5 Stars that has downsides with which I rarely put up. But then, its cute, and lovely, I spent quite some time in the game, and it had me gripped for nearly the whole time. The pacing changes sometimes - although there is nearly never a real time pressure - but the game explores different urgencies, has great characters, that you explore more than just in passing, and the same is true of the environment. Its not a very big game world, but it works, and its wonderful to be able to experience such a wonderful crafted world more than just a little time. And it has also to be said: I did not really encounter gamestopping or annyoing bugs. Sometimes a few holes in the world, which could be looked through, but thats all. Many major titles have much more problems in that area. All in all, I would really like it if there were another, expanded game in this universe. Its just lovely. Downsides: Major: A real, useful ending is missing Its more like its an introduction for part two. Thats just a bit sad after the rest of the adventure was that great. And also there are a lot of quests that cannot be finished until you are further in the story. And there is no real indication for that. Thats something that annoyed me a bit. Other: Much backtracking Nice costumes, but you cannot finish most of them till you are close to the end. The stealth mechanic is more or less made obsolete (if one wishes to) a bit into the game. There are some downsides to this, but still it would be much better if that wouldn't apply to all the enemies around. Still, the downsides by far - in this case - do not warrant a removal of a star. Its just a great game.
So, I really had to do it. I had to give that game to stars although I like to play it. Reasons why might contain spoilers: Overall its a nice game, has quite okay feeling and setting and plays nice after the initial "You have crap stats and crap equipment, here are some quite powerful enemies" phase is done. It walks along well, but the line between "Why was it THAT easy?" over "That went as expected" to "WTF did the game just do, that was not what I intended" is crossed too often. My main breaking point for the stars - after minor problems here and there with quests, possible answers etc. - was the following (the second one can't be included due to length restraints): 1) A Quest area, where you cannot do your job NOW because the more or less not that big bad there has equipment that woul allow him to rule the wastes without competition. There are Turrets that kill your full health party in one turn BEFORE you even can act. They have so much health, that your WHOLE party would have to shoot 3 Rocket Launchers at it (each, about 20 shots would do enough damage) before one of them is down. There are two. What you get off is ONE shot. Then you are dead. IF you should somehow manage to kill the turrets, then there are mines that - if you see them - cannot be disarmed by a master (fully leveled) demolition expert. Again, those kill in one explosion. Full kill as far as I know, not just unconscious ore nearly dead ore something. All that, because the developers want you to be unable to prevent something bad from happenening, so you need one special part from somewhere else, that triggers the bad thing. If you have the special part via some other way (cheating, loot luck etc.) It just doesn't work as it should. Thats so immensly bad writing and quest design that this occuring is worth two negative stars in my opinion. Its not the first time in the game the developers try to force something on you without having valid other options avaiable as well.
I got this game for free somewhere else, but my experience warrants a review: QUBE 2 tries to be a puzzle game in the style of Portal. It tries to be mysterious. It tries to be intrigue you. It fails every time. Playtime: 8 hours. To the end. On the first time. And usually, I am one to take quite a bit of time with games. All the time while playing I was waiting for "when the real game" begins, as it all still felt like a more complex tutorial. Well, it ended before the real game began. The story - not something I can get behind, everyone always tells you "I tell you later" Well, just there is no later. In reality you would have sat down at one time and just waited till someone offered more than a few sentences before doing anything. In a game, you can't cause you just know the scripted next lines are locked behing you playing on. On the whole, its too easy, missing at least the other half, and the writing is lazy. It has nice voice actors, and the athmosphere would be nice, if it wouldn't give me that "shove being mysterious in the players face" vibe. Overall it can get an "okay". It didn't crash, it played through. I've played worse, so thanks for the fish. But not again, it has no allure to replay it. It's saved from getting 2 Stars only because its okay enough and has no technical downsides. 5 Options to rate are too small a scale for me, cause I reserve extremes for extreme cases, so I mention this.
The game was fun to play, especially the first levels. It was challenging, manageable, and had fun elements. Not so fun: 1) The game has secrets, but often stops you from backtracking to find them in later levels, which made it frustrating for someone who likes to find them as me. 2) The game autosaves after finishing a level, so when you accidentally walk there, you cannot load your older save anymore, cause that is overwritten. 3) The ending sucks and makes not much sense. The last level managed to make an interesting contribution, and then - nothing out of it, cut short and sucky. 4) Sometimes the game needs the "Enter" key, even though it isn't mentioned or shown. All in all, funny, worth it, but with downsides.
Finished it today. And finally can voice my opinion: Its a solid game. Some Parts are likeable. Then it feels repeating again and again. Some times the game manages to give the impression it builds up to something, Sadly, it never happens. It managed to make me play it through, so that can be said for it, but... Its lacking soul I would say. [spoiler] After all that slow build up, the weird Inner Areas i really was expecting something to come out of it, a twist at the end that pulls it around once, something. But no, there is nothing, Both "end sequences" consist of a bright light and then a short animation of something glowing - one way or the other. The texts in the game were more esciting than that. Disappointing. [/spoiler]
That game spoke out to me, with its graphics, the way it is played, its general style. Once I had it, I dived headlong into it. It is definitly very enjoyable. It sadly left me behind with a bad taste because of the following two things (Spoilers of course): 1) It is too short. Very much so. I was getting into it, waiting for the challenges to get greater, and... suddenly it was done. Too easy, too short. I think all in all I spent about 10 hours in the game, and thats with starting anew because I thought I missed something, listening to everything, just to know it, and finding everything. 2) The story is intriguing, fascinating, and mysterious - until it gets bland, boring and crash lands. I feared the story coming a mile away, and sadly was not disappointed. Before it was really nice, I was eager t find out more (only to find out that was it, see 1), and after I knew more, I was just hoping that it is done soon.) The way the boring story is done, is worse than the story itself. There would have been more potential, much more. Yes, it was somehow interesting for 1 or 2 seconds, but it was not giving something. Like satisfaction. Also the end feels VERY rushed. Without need the gameplay is taken from your hands, you are forced into the end sequence, have all this dialogue - even if you do it a second, third, etc. time. ("choices") Confounded with the above two: It is too easy. I was waiting for the game to throw something more complicated at me than throwing abutton at the right time. Actually thinking for the solution. One of the "major" steps I accomplished by accident. There should have been someone trying to make it more complicated. That said, the scenario of the game is great. The gameplay and athmosphere is great. The attention to detail i superb. If you think of it as more of a story experienced through interesting gameplay, then it gets better. But that was not what I was expecting. It was hard deciding between 3 and 4 stars, but since I enjoyed myself while it lasted, and was really hooked into it, the 4 stars are alright.
I got through the game, I am mostly satisfied, and it has so many interesting aspects and beauties to it, that I can overlook the flaws - mostly, If you like FPS, and are okay with different mechanics than "shoot enemy in head, move on to next", than this is a wonderful game for you. My mature down points were: 1) I was expecting an open world, I guess from the screen shots. It is partly open, but mostly strictly linear in its levels. You can approach your targets different ways though most of the time, so you have some freedom how to proceed. (Stealth only works partially though) 2) From the screenshots i got the impression, that you will fly with a kite or something ingame. That's not there. its a mine cart where I interpreted to much into surrounding architecture. 3) The game changes pace - and somehow also style - about halfway through quite a lot. The "do it your way, take your time" approach gets partly replaced by pressure to proceed. 4) On hard, some aspects of the game are harder than others. You have the option to take people alive, and on hard, especially bosses are very hard to get alive, its much easier to kill them. That took some fun out of me, and even amde me have a major break in my playthrough. 5) I still don't understand the ending. Maybe you have better luck ;-) All in all, even though it has downsides, it is worth the five stars, because of the experiments and creativity in style, weapons, setting, etc. that other FPS lack. Oh and one of your Ammo talks to you. Its so much fun I sometimes switched it on even I used it rarely ;-)
