Anyone familiar with Bethesda RPGs will feel right at home with this game. The gameplay loop, story, engine and bugs are basically the same as Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 4, etc. You play as a nameless cretin, plunged into a violent world after a short introduction quest. The world has some nice vistas, intense survival gameplay (on higher difficulties) at the start and interesting scaled down real-life locations. The game also has a lot of jank, inane stories and quests, companions blocking your path (which they didn't even fix in in Skyrim or FO4), low effort minigames and bad level scaling. Exploring can be intense and rewarding but is often annoying with complicating underground metro layouts and random bullet sponge enemies everywhere. It's apparent Bethesda has no clue on how to tell good stories or make interesting worlds. The choices your character makes boil down to good and evil. While the evil choices are fun and sometimes very evil, there usually isn't a good reason, gameplay wise or in real-life, why you would choose the evil option. The faction system in FO:NV makes a lot more sense. Graphics hold up well in 2025 and stability is actually pretty good with the unofficial patch/tick fix and a few texture mods. Overall, I enjoyed my 150 hours with the game + DLC, but was also annoyed with many of the decisions made by the developer.
Nice graphics, nice music and mediocre gameplay in an OK puzzle game. There are lots of chase sequences hindered by the 2.5D world, the first game is better in this regard. Also some bugs preventing progress. Sometimes I quit a puzzle after fiddling for half an hour, noticing the same action suddenly worked when restarting the game. Puzzles are interesting and unique, nothing to difficult. Overall I enjoyed the game but was kinda relieved when it was over.
Dying Light is fun, terrifying and the gameplay is amazing, even when playing with a controller. The world building is excellent, it reminds me a bit of Sleeping Dogs, Just Cause and GTA. Searching for items on a broken bridge, with hundreds of zombies running around abandonded cars and buses make the game into a truly terrifying experience. And don't even think about scavenging at night. Graphics and music are good, voice acting is decent combined with a big open world. Lots of fetch quests and a pretty predictable story can't take away the fun and horror you will experience playing this game! The highlight is the parkour system, which remains satisfying and fun throughout the game. Highly recommended!
How hard can it be? You manage a group of pilots in big machines fighting against a group of enemies. Everything the enemy will do is shown on screen. Where will it attack, how much damage will it cause? How much collateral damage, where are new enemies spawning, what buffs and ability are active? Well, everything above and more is shown on screen before you make your move. You got infinite time to figure it out. So how hard can it be? It turns out to be pretty damn hard. My experience on normal difficulty as someone who doesn't play many strategy games: - This game is pretty hard in the first few hours but after about 6 hours of playing it "clicked" so to speak and from that point I managed to clear every mission and earn all the bonus objectives (perfect island scores) in one playthrough. - Some of the mechanics are obscure and only revealed through trial and error. - The better you get, the more upgrades you can acquire, making the next few missions even easier.
The Talos Principle is a great puzzle game, on the verge of being pretentious. It requires you to solve puzzles which get progressively harder. The game is difficult enough to make you waste a good 15 minutes every now and then, without becoming annoying. It doesn't have humor like portal or an insidious setting like Limbo or Little Nightmares. Good: - Good balance and difficulty - Supreme soundtrack - Graphics look amazing despite its age - Story sticks with you after you're done Bad: - Overstays its welcome a bit. With only a few mechanics I was waiting for the end halfway through - Most random texts are just that, random and rather uninteresting Conclusion Great game, at 90% off it feels like a steal.
