In an earnest attempt to make a unique and emotional point-and-click game, Rundisc haven't quite managed to temper their ambitions and focus on the important parts.

It stands to reason that in a game all about various peoples being torn apart and pitted against each other by isolation brought about through archaic, othering traditions, you'd want to represent the actual pressure points between these groups in gameplay, show and not just tell. But doing so through goofy, ill-fitting stealth segments and boring roadblocks is hardly an interesting way to go about it. All the backtracking doesn't help the issue at all either, nor do the actual multiple mazes that you sometimes have to go through actual multiple times.

In the same vein, perhaps there needed to be more dialogue written to show the delusions the peoples of the tower harbour about each other. The bards talk about living in pure bliss and call you (and also everyone else) an idiot, and the warriors deem devotees to be akin to demons, but the devotees themselves barely have a social hierarchy to speak of, much less concrete beliefs about the other groups living in the tower. The scientists, in the meantime, are really just caught in everyone else's bullshit, wanting only to learn all there is about the world they find themselves in. And these divisions are very easily overcome: just translate the devotees' plea for an irigation system, and inform the bards' slaves that they can live free in the abbey. As a result of this whole "peoples torn apart" thing feeling underdeveloped, the 'true' ending feels good, but a bit forced, with decades, perhaps centuries of tribalism overcome, really, with just a couple conversations.

I'd be happy to treat this narrative as a cute little parable about how ignorance breeds bigotry and understanding begets unity and prosperity for all, but this specific part of the story just wasn't given enough attention. In the moment-to-moment, though the player character is explicitly a drone created to bridge the tower's divides, this is a tale of your journey. You get to desipher all these languages, you find out the histories and cultures of these people, and you are the hero who gets rid of this weird AI thing at the end. Even though Chants of Sennaar treats you as a literal translator-robot, it still tells your story, and the moment at the end, where every group in the tower gathers at the top to find out that (I think?) all their most central ideas are really the same and that they share a similar goal...feels somehow incidental.

But truth be told, even though a good bit of this game felt undercooked and unpolished, these small moments of you establishing connections between the different inhabitants of the tower, plus the deeply earnest final stretch, make this game a worthwhile experience. It's not GOTY material, but it doesn't need to be that to still have its fair share of brilliance.

A wonderful little time that gives you a lot of bang for your buck, though not all of it is terribly exciting. It's undeniably fun to see new mechanics and permutations of old mechanics, as well as complete left-field segments being thrown at you at a fast pace, but this approach lets to some of those additions being bland or not reaching their full potential. I had a lot of fun exploring the ocean, preparing
ingredients for special guests or events, gathering upgrade materials...but I just know that if some of that were omitted the game would have been better.

I'm not saying 'make this just a fishing game or just a restaraunt sim', but looking back at my 20-something hours with Dave the Diver, I can't say my enjoynment was consistent. The first couple hours were a bit of a drag, then going ever-deeper and unlocking new tools and discovering new sides to this gameplay loop was fun as all hell! But then the Glacial Area was a bit of a let-down, and the Vents were just a medium-size lead up to the final, somewhat anti-climactic boss. And I just can't help but think that maybe you didn't need to do ONE shitty MGS segment, or ONE boat chase with a secondary character, or ONE round of a rythm game with the most embarassing of stereotypes. Maybe then the pacing could've been tighted up, the management aspect made more complicated than "just sell the priciest fish and you're golden"?

I'm not sure. This team clearly has a lot of talent, and one of the reasons I'd call time spent with this game well spent is that, while it's not super original, all the disparate parts of Dave the Diver are exceptionally well done and brimming with character, even if they don't always come together. The stylised pixel-art combines beautifully with the 3D environments and enemies, and while that style somewhat reminded me of Octopath and Katamari, neither ever got me into the fins of a hard-working, good-natured guy who just likes sushi and diving for the fish to make it, willing to battle giant monsters to do his job or to help a friend out. And though Katamari often deals with big stuff, the Prince was never asked to swim through the darkest depths of the sea to hunt for sharks quadruple his size. Honestly, Dave might be the saving grace of this whole game for me, as it never gets tiring to lead him on his journeys. I might've called the final boss anti-climactic, but the ending, with everyone living happily ever after and Dave, stretched out on his bed after a long day of fishing and killing a giant prehistoric shrimp, his gear drying on the balcony, after getting drunk with all his friends and co-workers, felt oddly fitting. This game might've been all wacky fish slaying, but it's also about a guy just doing his thing. And that's the kinda thing I can get behind.

P.S.
Shut the hell up about this not being indie, nobody said it is aside from the fucking Game Awards, and they gave mor speaking time to Actor McTexasman than their GOTY recepients. Who cares! Big companies putting more money into (relatively) smaller projects is exactly what the AAA space needs, and you assholes make it seem like Mintrocket is stealing Sabotage's thunder

A year later and I remembered I didn't rate this one

West of Dead is unique and mostly well-made, but this is one of the most "Made by a 3-6 dev team on a shoestring budget" games I've ever played, that is not dogshit or extremely barren. It is barren by the genre standards, mind you - after 15 hours spent with this game, I've unlocked everything it has to offer and have beaten the game more than enough time to totally exhaust all of its enemy and tileset variety, plus getting all but 4 achievements. West of Dead's gameplay is not deep enough to be a forever game you keep perpetually installed on your SSD, and it's item and weapon lists are not long enough to keep you playing for dozens of hours. While it's better than 70% of roguelikes on the market, it struggles to stand out or, for lack of a better term, give you more bank for your buck than other games in the space. I have to stress, again, that this is a pretty swell game all things concidered, but it's a decidedly finite experience in a sea of infinite ones, and it's shorter runtime is not better than a similar length of time spent playing the competition.

Hope Web of Wyrd is better!

Assassin’s Creed Revelations is a nice enough conclusion to the Ezio trilogy, though even calling it that feels like I’m buying into the Ubisoft marketing hype a little bit. AC2 was an actual story, throughout the course of which Ezio went through life-changing events, learned some stuff, developed his worldview, and ultimately set the events of the rest of the franchise in motion, proper. It was a neat adventure that perfectly characterised Ezio and made it feel great to embody him in his beautifully realised world. Brotherhood was almost entirely disconnected from that, and its pacing and structure did nothing to further or even conclude Ezio’s arc started in #2, though gameplay has evolved in some key areas. Through Brotherhood’s incoherent narrative, Revelations is left almost entirely isolated. Neither Ezio’s nor Desmond’s story has a direct connection with the last game’s, and the new mechanics would be left on the cutting room floor by AC3.

Because of how unfinished and convoluted AC2 and 2.5 are from a narrative perspective, Revelation was the most fun, interesting and consistent experience in the Ezio saga for me. Though, of course, even it didn’t escape the troubled development cycle of every Assassin’s Creed title, safe for, perhaps, the RPG games.

It’s no secret that the new gameplay elements of Revelation came down as all together pretty lame. The bombs are fun to construct, and can be pretty useful, but the illusion of choice shatters pretty quickly, as you realise just how functionally identical most of the three choices of “filling” are for each of the bomb types. And it’s not like bombs don’t have their use cases, it’s just that throwing a grenade to delete people, a noise grenade to distract people, or a smoke bomb to confuse people are all either making the game way too easy or function the same as other actions you could perform in Brotherhood. I mean, we already had smoke bombs, and using any other tactical bomb in Revelations is a huge waste of time!

The Assassin’s Den defence mode is pretty similar: a fun, but superfluous addition, interactions with which are rarely required, and which is hardly showcased outside of the tutorial. Hell, I was doing a fair amount of the side-stuff in this game, and, in total, I’ve only played the tower-defence mode three times (that’s on a roughly 15h save). And it was never remotely challenging or worth doing aside from the fact that not doing it means you have to capture the corresponding outpost a second time.

A fun and actually worthwhile new thing in Revelations is the hook-blade, a mechanic I wish returned in future titles. Lots of the unique interactions you can trigger with it are fairly whatever-ish and not super useful, but having a button you can press to speed up traversal whenever you need it feels like the sort of evolution the parkour system really needed. AC3 simplified it to the point of automation and lack of agency, frequently pulling you in the directions you weren’t trying to go in, or working in counterintuitive ways that broke your immersion. But with the hookblade, you actively choose where and when you want your jumps to be higher, your reach longer, or what direction for your lamp posts to turn. The Ezio days of jumping and climbing were oftentimes filled with jank and slowness, but a world built around that sort of movement, plus QOL changes similar to the hookblade, could’ve made it soar to some pretty fantastic heights. Oh, well.

Speaking of the world…it’s weird.

AC2 was a beautiful game, for its time. It’s not like it doesn’t hold up at all, but the colours were muted, the LOD scaling unimpressive, and the visual variety not always there. Brotherhood was a huge facelift for the world, with stunningly recreated architecture and vivid colours, whether in planes or dense city districts, but it was more fun to look at than to actually traverse. The mechanical difference in traversal between Florence, Venice and the various outdoor-sy open areas was felt heavily in AC2, which made it fun to switch between them for mainline or sideline missions and activities. On the contrary, Rome felt pretty homogenous, and there were simply not enough parkour routes one might have wanted to take.

Istanbul occupies sort of a middle point between the beauty and graphical fidelity of Rome and plentiful opportunities for traversal and a sense of mechanical identity of the world(s) of AC 2. It’s just as distinct and engaging as the different locales of Assassin’s Creed II, with a wealth of fun parkour paths and plentiful lanterns and zip-lines to take advantage of the hookblade, but the visuals do sometimes leave you wanting more, with an often drab colour-palette and a bit of that Orientalist colour-grading that can bathe a lot of the different city districts in the same greenish browns and yellows. Kostantiniyye in general is perhaps the biggest victim of Revelations’ difficult development, as the large number of NPC models imported from previous Ezio outings doesn’t sell you on the idea that you’re traversing through Turkey, and reminds you more of Italy. It feels more like Ezio is one of hundreds of Florentines who decided to make a trip here, only they are dressed as though they actually live there.

The mayofication of Istanbul (and Masyaf, through the Altair flashbacks) is even funnier considering that the precious few darker-skinned or remotely arab- or turkic-looking individuals in Revelations tend to be villains. It’s especially hilarious how everyone in Masyaf is as white as Lucy Stillman, but then the Templar bad guy, who’s also an Assassin defector, could come straight out of a conservative political cartoon about the intrinsic evilness of muslims (though, thankfully, in looks only). The same with the Istanbul Assassin traitor, and the guy who killed Altair’s family. Funny, that.

Thankfully, these blemishes aren’t enough to diminish the strength of the story, which is pretty laser-focused on Ezio’s quest. The quest itself is used as a vehicle to showcase this old and mature Ezio, dispensing wisdom and cool Uncharted set-pieces on us with no less pazazz, but more sophistication and purpose. His story in the previous games was far too often characterised by revenge, which, particularly in Brotherhood, had a habit of derailing any sort of character development in favour of moving the plot along. In Revelations, however, the plot is a good bit more straightforward: it’s a treasure hunt.

But it being a treasure hunt doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. Along the way you meet intriguing new characters (like two lmao), expand on the old ones, discover secrets and go through some amazing action sequences. Ezio, once again, is presented perfectly as the older version of the guy we played as in AC2 and Brotherhood. He’s less brash, more careful and considerate, less prone to anger but no less ruthless. Ezio proved everything he had to back in Italy, so now he’s more concerned with helping his brothers in Istanbul and stopping Templars before they get their hands on Altair’s knowledge stash. In a way, Ezio’s fight in Revelations is a lot less personal than it used to be, but that isn’t a bad thing. Seeing an old action man, still in his element, doing the battle with the evil is fun in and of itself, especially if you’ve played through his previous exploits that gave you a great familiarity with his inner-workings and typical behaviour. It works as a final chapter in his life, because, like I’ve said, he’s got nothing to prove. This is just the final thing he has to do before he hangs the robes, and at the end, he does! It’s like Cars 3, but the theme of “I’ve done enough” is actually developed.

Surprisingly enough, this isn’t the only theme of this game. Ezio somewhat struggles with letting go and the meaning of (his) life, but this is an element not given enough attention. His whole inner-conflict is lightly hinted at through his letters, in which he talks about Sofia, and the final monologue, in which he reflects on the purpose of the Assassins, but in a roughly 10 hour main quest, this is not brought up nearly enough.

No, the bulk of thematic development is given to Altair, of all people. And it’s funny, right? A guy so bland and uninteresting was elevated to legendary status amongst many hard-core AC fans, almost entirely thanks to the five flashbacks he has in a game three titles removed from his own. But I can’t complain too much, because these flashbacks really were excellent.

They’re especially excellent because they might contain the first real instances of the Assassin vs Templar ideological conflict executed in an engaging and thought-provoking manner.

Haras, the Assassin defector from the first flashback, is as cookie-cutter Templar bad guy as they come: he wanted power and fortune, left the Assassins for the Templars, then preached about how “the Templars know the truth”, even though he demonstrably doesn’t care about any of it. It’s fitting in a way, to see a character so nakedly self-serving on the side of a power-hungry organisation like the Templars, but it doesn’t make him any more interesting.

Abbas, on the other hand, is a different story. He’s just as pathetic and cowardly as Haras was, but his lust for power and control is motivated by extreme delusion and envy, more than anything. He preaches peace and the importance of order that Altair would supposedly disrupt, but is willing to put everything on the line for his cruel and misguided quest for revenge. He kills Altair’s whole family, throws his own Order into disarray, and terrorises civilians. Though he calls himself an Assassin, he also opposes the archetypical Assassinscreedsian, Altair, and enacts all the policies a Templar would, his rivalry with Altair functionally emulating the Templar vs Assassin dynamic. Read this way, their relationship becomes a pretty clear example of how the Templars manipulate truth, weaponise personal aggrievement, and target gain of power over anything else. Individual Templars may justify their agenda differently, but power is their only goal, and attaining it reveals their oftentimes miserable nature.

From the death of his father onward, Abbas spends the rest of his life vying for control of the Order and possession of the Apple, a source of power he was never ready for. Weird lore reasons aside, it's fascinating how the power of the Apple is showcased when wielded by Altair vs Abbas. Altair sets out to learn from it, the knowledge he unlocks used to strengthen his Order and aid future generations in saving the world. He’s briefly overcome with rage when using it when confronting Abbas, and promptly punished for it. After that, he only grew in his appreciation for the knowledge its power could give, and the dangers it could pose. Abbas, on the other hand, self-serving as he is, was enamoured by the Apple for the supposed might it would confer onto him, had he only been allowed to gleam it. Even after almost dying after he stole it from the study, he’s not satisfied with leaving this immense power well enough alone. Which ultimately leads to his downfall, itself leading to Altair’s realisation that the castle and all the showboating of the Assassins is antithetical and counterproductive to their cause. Altair doesn’t only learn from his mistakes, but from how his and Al Mualim’s failings ultimately birth destructive and misguided forces, manifest in Abbas.

Their story is the first, and one of the only, examples of how the Assassin and Templar views on power clash, and the result these two schools of thought lead to. Assassins have long been criticised for not really doing a whole lot to affect change; they’re content fighting the worst excesses of power getting out of control. Ezio, even in this game, pals around with aristocrats and allies himself with morally questionable groups just to stop another Templar plot, which makes his story feel disconnected from whatever political and philosophical questions raised by the series’ main conflict between “Order” and “Freedom”. But Altair’s story mostly does away with the politics, and examines the core of these two groups’ ideology in a deeply personal way.

But Sofia does suck, oh my fucking god how I hate her inclusion

Oh right I beat this
Concidering the story that directly flows from one game to another, and how similar they are in every aspect of their construction, I think it makes the most sense to review these two games together.

With that in mind, I'd say that both parts have almost opposite strengths and weaknesses in respect to gameplay, level/world-design and story.

When it comes to combat, Brotherhood is just a better version of what we got in 2. The weapons are more fun and easier to use, there's a larger variety of them, and the kill-streak mechanic speeds things up considerably.

Traversal is mixed, since you have a slightly more diverse setting in AC2, where Firenze, Venezia and the "mostly solid ground" areas feel totally different to traverse, whereas Roma can get slightly old in that particular department. On the other hand, individual levels of Brotherhood, especially the Romulus cult hideouts and Leonardo's machines outposts, are really fun to go through, not to mention that the graphical uplift makes any area in Brotherhood more pleasant and visually engaging than in the previous game.

The visuals are a big reason why I'd say that the world of Brotherhood is better than that of II; Roma is just a more visually fascinating place to be in, whether you're in the old ruins, the places of religious and political import, or in the wetlands. It was especially cool to see the Colosseum and Castel Sant'Angelo after I've gone to real-life Roma myself a couple years back.

In comparison, Assassin's Creed II's world, while mechanically fun and occasionally very beautiful, suffers severely from outdated visuals and boring side-content. Playing both games back-to-back, it's so noticeable how much better Brotherhood cleans up for 1440p than AC2 does, with its low LOD walls and NPC models visible from mere metres, and its weird lighting, and its washed-out colour palette.

And that, by the way, is another point in favour of Brotherhood: the breath and general quality of content scattered around the map. I know people tend not to like the icon-riddled maps of Ubisoft games, but I think both Brotherhood and II handle it pretty gracefully: you're never distracted by icons appearing right in your face or covering the whole minimap, and with how familiar you get with these locations, a player can, theoretically, rely on their knowledge of the actual world to navigate it, instead of constantly consulting the map. In Brotherhood, specifically, the side-content itself is largely made up of engaging and fun activities, be it simple faction missions, whole-ass scripted missions with platforming or combat challenges, or good ol' outpost capture. The kinda big problem with both games is that you can actively worsen your interactions with the world by buying treasure and collectibles maps, which genuinely make your map unintelligible at times.

The story is the only unequivocal W I'd give to AC2, since Brotherhood mostly under delivers, which is mostly due to how personal 2’s is.

It’s not a deep philosophical treatise for the ages or anything, but we spend exactly enough time with Ezio before the gabagools get his family, letting us soak in his charm and passion, ultimately just letting us get to know him, which is the most important step in building sympathy. And sure, for most of the game he is just sort of wandering around from place to place, killing the badmen, but it’s still fun to accompany him on this journey. The fairly engaging script, stellar score and some nice conspiracy-unravelling shenanigans keep you entertained throughout, and stuff like the fucking newly born tutorial is some of the most memorable shit in any game I’ve played. I don’t much care for anyone else, but Ezio’s relationship with the remaining members of his family and some of the aristocrats is believable. And it’s cool how long of a story it is, chronologically, as Ezio genuinely feels like he’s maturing and developing his worldview as it progresses. The plot itself could’ve done with more brevity, but still.

This is also neat because of how the game fully utilises the ol’ Animus in it’s storytelling: because of the frequent time-skips, the Auditore Company Town rebuilding effort, and plentiful out-of-the-machine dialogue and segments, the premise feels well executed on. This is definitely a part of the series’ identity that’s been lost since the Ezio games (though it was later found and shot dead with AC4), a sense that you’re not playing a videogame, but reliving a memory through some tech-magic. Doesn’t hurt that Desmond and co. too are far more interesting and engaging than they were in the first game.

Brotherhood, in comparison, has a bit more going on in the plot itself, but the story doesn’t feel as intimate or coherent. At the end of the day, what made AC2’s story a success is that it’s a fairly simple revenge adventure with a captivating lead. Brotherhood keeps the lead, but the adventure feels incredibly segmented. Ezio is strewn along from the epilogue of AC2, to the siege of Auditore Villa, to adjusting himself to the situation in Roma and trying to grow and maintain the brotherhood through various one-off team-building missions with characters from the previous game, in which they were fun and used well to establish the world Ezio found himself in, but now they fell strictly utilitarian. Nobody really feels like they are there to tell emotional stories or have interesting conversations, just a series of extended tutorials that lead to the finale. I mentioned already how levels in Brotherhood tend to be more entertaining and memorable, and it’s not devoid of great narrative beats, but the whole thing just doesn’t come together as neatly.

The biggest sin of Brotherhood is that it doesn’t feel…like a whole story, really. On the Ezio front, It’s a collection of episodes of an AC show all about Ezio stopping a crazy incest man, and hiding a macguffin for the, surprisingly, the real star of the show, Desmond, to find centuries later. And the Desmond stuff comes down to a brief few sessions of Assassin Guy sifting through his ancestral memory and dicking around in an Italian tourist destination until the plot kicks down his door.

And, spoilers for Revelations, that’s really the main issue with this whole Ezio “Trilogy”. It’s a game with a story that doesn’t conclude one of two main plots, the second story which consists of 95% side-quest filler, and a concluding chapter that actually tries to put a bow on the ones before it, retroactively and with its own host of issues to boot. Assassin’s Creed 1 was a pretty bad game all things considered, but with its innovations and bold creative decisions, plus, AT THE VERY LEAST, a cohesive narrative, it stands out as the most uncomplicated AC game pre-Assassin’s Creed 3.

With 2’s cliffhanger, Brotherhood’s unfocussed direction, and Revelations’ [REDACTED], the first few steps of this series, while iconic, were also pretty awkward. It’s a shame that AC3 was basically the last game to attempt to develop the ideas and world set up in the first and second games, because, honestly, none of these games really rise above a 7/10. It’s great if you love them, but I do sometimes wish for a world where the Ezio days were looked back at as the weird first attempts at creating this weird historical/science-fiction open-world adventure, rather than the narrative pinnacle of the franchise.

And yes, 3.5 stars for both of these. Get me out of here!

Judging from the open beta, this game has the potential to be one of the greatest PVP multiplayer FPS still (a)live, but some little and big things might prevent it from truly making it to the big leagues, or, at least, from staying there too long.

The biggest reason for that is that the content on offer is a bit one-note, with a gameplay that requires a lot of teamwork to be successful. The only two distinct modes are a capture-defense type, and that mode where you get coins from killing people that you then bank at a special terminal. Plus a tournament version of one of those.

And they are great, don't get me wrong. The much-praised gunplay is fun and the equipment allows for a wide range of strategies, the destruction is fantastic, and the presentation holding it all together is solid. That's all true.

But the thing is, the carry potential is a bit too small, meaning that if you're up against even a somewhat well-coordinated team, and your two guys are mongrels who don't push objectives or just aren't that good at shooting or throwing barrels yet, you are almost guaranteed to lose. The winner-takes-all nature of Quick Cash, plus a lack of an overtime (the timer runs over a bit if the objective is contested) or sudden death (everyone respawns in the last throws of a match) mechanics, means that defending your cash-out requires some careful planning and consideration, as losing the objective in the last 20-30 seconds of a match might mean that you'd just have to watch helplessly as your wiped-out team is defeated and the winner does, indeed, take it all with little resistance. And again, it'd be exceedingly hard to avoid being on the losing side of this particular interaction if your team isn't going for objectives, wasting time taking long roundabouts, doesn't consist of two full members, or doesn't exist at all. Because yes, I've had plenty of times where I've been connected to a match with a full team but one or two members left before seeing the game through to the end, and even been connected to a match in-progress where my team was entirely empty before my arrival. This is actually the biggest weirdo freak thing The Finals does: often you will start or end your match with an incomplete squad, but rarely do the empty slots get filled in.

That issue is further exacerbated with the lack-luster communication features on offer. There is no chat at all, no way to quickly ask for healing or denote traps or strategic destruction points, and the "request revive" button only makes your downed character icon emanate a faint glow, which I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of players don't know the meaning of. The objectives in this game aren't difficult, but aren't always immediately intuitive, and the nuances of destruction mechanics, plus the nature of "Specializations" and different types of grenades, really make some matches frustrating when your team isn't pushing the limited ping system to the max or aren't playing as a team.

The other big mode, Bank It, is a bit more forgiving: your goal is to kill your opponents, collect the coins that splurge out of them, and bank them at designated and time-limited points on the map. Bank It is great for casual solo-play because the issue of players being too enamored with the gunplay to push objectives is not as persistent -- you are supposed to focus on killing. The problem of "poorly coordinating teams of lemmings vs sweaty CoD vets" is also somewhat alleviated here, since coins drop from everyone on death, meaning that it's possible to lose your teammates in a skirmish, collect their death doubloons and skedaddle without the deaths or the skedaddling being an outright setback. The destruction shines in the main capture-defense mode, but the main combat loop gets it's full spotlight right here.

The only issue with Bank It is purely one of balancing. Simply put, light builds with a sword or a silent pistol are guaranteed to do better than heavies and mediums, due to lacking mobility of the former and support-based gameplay of the ladder. It's clear that the classes and their general kit were based around the more defense-focused modes, but the light is built as a disruptor, with their abundant mobility options and small hitboxes, which makes them a powerhouse in a mode where speed and evasion is everything.

Overall, these issues aren't game-breaking or essential; I can easily envision a one-day patch that fixes the balancing issues, ads more relevant ping options and gives them shortcuts, as well as making them more contextually adaptable, and does away with small annoyances like not being able to customise your weapons from the equipment tab. And it's also entirely possible that as early as this year or the first months of 2024 we will see more maps, a traditional deathmatch mode and a singles option for match-making.

But I do worry that some of these changes won't come soon enough, and that The Finals might struggle to maintain or even gain any meaningful momentum. This game is fantastic, it's fresh, and it's visual style and iconography have a potential to become absolutely...well, iconic. All I hope for is that it actually happens.

3.5 stars for the state the game is in as of this last Beta; might go way up if the devs play their cards right

P.S.
Apparently the game uses AI text-to-speech for barks and announcer lines, which explains why the announcers sound so stilted and weird. Fuck that! Hope that's adressed with the damn day-one patch!

UPD:
I just read some more interviews and lurked a bit on Reddit and y'know what, make this game 3 stars. Embark is both run and funded as if it were a AAA studio yet the fans argue that AI-voiceover was something the devs needed to do in order for this game to exist and have a brisk development pace, which is the view Embark tacitly supports. And that's obviously bullshit.

Don't have any thoughts on it that you haven't heard: it's the perfect FPS campaign, with it's immaculately intense and engaging gameplay, fantastic presentation and a fun, earnestly ridiculous epic story. It's especially fascinating how modern Id managed to find a voice for this game that's so distinct to the original games, but so reverent towards them; a very satisfying natural evolution of the creative elements found in the original trilogy with totally innovative combat.

But you really should've been able to look at the DAISY_PICS instead of playing Doom II in the Slayer's mancave-esque demonic Watchtower. 0/10


also the multiplayer is kinda meh but whatever

what if Doom II had a jump button: the game

UPD: The dumb reductionism is fun but if I'm being serious, DooD 2066 was pretty fucking mind-melting at the time, with the sleek presentation and a banging soundtrack playing as you plow through demon hordes...but it's not as impressive anymore. Nowadays, it's readily apparent just how unfinished this game ultimately is. Enemies aren't as aggressive as they should be, regularly requiring you to seek them out at the end of an encounter just to make the music stop blaring at full volume with nothing going on; guns are essentially interchangeable; multiple levels are too long or convoluted, and the final boss is a huge joke.

All that is understandable given the development hell this Doomguy went through, and it is incredible just how playable Doom 2016 is, but after Eternal went and gave us the best FPS campaign ever, 2016's flaws are harder to ignore. I can understand why one would prefer the first game to the second, but it isn't that enjoyable to me anymore

I think I'm just burnt out on this game; really should just stop doing side activities in open-world titles at this point. BG3's been great for most of my playthrough, but when we got to the city all the fun character interactions practically stopped, the game started breaking in big and small ways (even after all the hilarious patches), and your goal has literally become just "do as much as possible before going killing the badmen". Don't know if I ever manage to beat it, but I'm just going to have to drop this one for now. Great gameplay and writing, but the execution, especially in regards to pacing, could've been a lot better

Also HO-LY SHIT Ansur sucks

UPD: The latest patch broke the game for me. Sadge

Look at this moron (me) dropping this DLC for four months thinking he had hours of game to play through, only to finally beat it in less than 2.

That aside, I think it says something that even several months after I stopped playing Grim Dawn broadly, and Ashes of Malmoth specifically, I could still recall a lot of fun moments, be it boss fights or just general ambiance of the levels. I definitely undersold the base game as having a "bland" aesthetic, because Grim Dawn has a beautiful blend of Blizzard-esque stylisation combined with post-apocalyptic fantasy, where spooky tentacle mosters, ghosts, bugs, knights and cowboys roam around giving the stink eye to the last remnants of civilization.

And in terms of gamedesign, AoM feels like a straight continuation and evolution of the base game, and also like it should've been the actual end of it. Grim Dawn ended on such a damp fart of a bossfight that not much would be required to improve it, but trudging through a factory where flesh monsters and cultists torment innocents into becoming a part of some fucked up other-wordly mega-structure of suffering DEFINITELY is a better conclusion to a story like Grim Dawn than the original final chapter ever was. Funnily enough, Ashes of Malmouth's ending suffers from some of the same problems as the original, like how defeating the final boss is rewarded by middling loot and a humble congratulatory speech from the big guy at the nearest human resistance camp. Not a cutscene, not a change in scenery, just a "We Did it Guys!" and an invitation to do all the grindy bounties and sidequests. The boss itself was awesome, but overall it's still kinda weak ngl.

But the ending is very much an outlier, with the beginning and middle being a straight upgrade on everything in the base game. AoM really focuses on just a few, tonally similar concepts for levels and enemies, thus being a bit more concistent while staying varied. There are some fun special enemy encounters, and the new totem system is a fun little activity to do while exploring or backtracking through already explored areas.

Also holy shit was it fun punching Cuthulu monsters and forest spirits in the face, I'm so glad I did AoM with a Shield Guy + Occultist combo. DON'T DO A SUMMONER BUILD THO, WORST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE

Great expansion

I played around an hour of this and I can't anymore.

After the success of Genshin Impact it really seems like Chinese MMO devs really homed-in on games from complex genres that simplify it to the point of blandness, where no-skill mechanics and systems are held together by FOMO, good art-direction and a somewhat big production value for the boring story cutscenes.

I love ragging on Genshin for bad female character design, where every woman (including children) must have either their legs, chest, belly or arms naked, but Torchlight Infinite is redicilous in this department: scantaly clad women with insanely unrealistic proportions run around in gigantic armour that might look cool, but doesn't really fit their character and is hilariously objectifying. At least here the art-direction is really strong; the spalsh-art specifically looks amazing.

Speaking of characters, again, like Genshin, this game doesn't allow you to have a character, even your pre-made character has no character. You're just an (arguably) cool-looking archetype for the typical RPG classes. Except here even the classes don't really matter, they play pretty similarly and, again, this game has no depth. You can only equip 5 skills on your hotbar, and they don't really matter (at least in the beginning), because you can't die and you do insane damage even to bosses.

Maybe on mobile it's fine as a sort of turn-your-brain-off game to play after a 12-hour shift, but man, why does it have to be one or the other? Why are free2play MMO-ARPGS either obtuse and extremely time-consuming (PoE), pay2win kid casinos (Diablo Immortal), or this braindead toddler's first ARPG of a game? Can't we just have a fun multiplayer ARPG where you can actually make choices and challenge yourself somewhat? That's such bullshit

Why'd I even play this during Next-Fest

Katamari Damacy has inconsistent levels, somewhat janky collision, and a selection of songs that can only be described as hit-or-miss. At the same time, it's totally unique tone and gameplay, plus the songs that really-really fucking hit make it totally deserving of being a cult classic. I'm sure We Love Katamari is better on, like, every technical level, but this kind of game is what we definitely need more of: a fun, approachable experience that doesn't sacrifice it's identity and the depth of it's mechanics for broad appeal. Such a sweet thing, Katamari is.

Slay the Spire does what the best games in the rogue-whatever genre do: throw you into a pit of chaos and teach you how to control it. It's no Synthetik or, like, Spelunky, and as with many roguelikes, just completing your first run will maybe take a few hours, but the structure of the game, the depth of strategy present in each deck+relic combo, and the contained tone of a short, but dangerous ascend through an evil tower make for a great, everlasting experience.

The overall presentation of Slay the Spire is probably it's most underappreciated aspect. The visuals are spotless, with a level of polish in the UI you don't see in a lot of the most popular indies, let alone AAA videogames; everything is clear, understandable, and technically inscrutable. The designs of the characters are not the best, but some of them are extremely memorable, especially when it comes to some of the Boss and Elite enemies. The sound, --- oh, man! Each floor's and special room's theme is very simple, but very memorable, and there are a lot of quirky voice-lines and crunchy sound-effects that give every card used a real sense of weight. And the overall art-style does a lot of small little things to stand out from the competition, and especially from, like, 97% of the games in the subgenre StS ended up birthing.

Overall, with it's level of popularity and importance for the industry, I wouldn't be surprised if this game came down as one of the 2010s best games, even if I wouldn't consider it one of my favourites. It's kind of been my addiction through most of 2022, and now it's just a comfort game I play every day to try and beat the next challenge, stave off the voices, that kind of thing. But though I praised the quality of Slay the Spire's technical aspects, it ultimately doesn't have a personality strong enough for me to connect with, and by its very nature exists to be experienced in short bursts of fun mind-jogging, much like checkers or beer pong. And there's nothing wrong with either of those things, and this game definitely deserves to be a lot of people's favourite thing ever, but it's not for me. Though it is a damn good time.

In conclusion I be Slaying her with my Spire. Thank you.

I'm not a Yakuza expert or whatever, but I feel this game did an amazing job transforming the series' usual formula and vibe into an even crazier, and slightly more lighthearted RPG adventure. I'd wish for it to be more whacky, honestly, because at times LaD feels way too much like Yakuza and not enough like whacky urban Dragon Quest, and the story ultimately doesn't quite manage to bring these two influences together. The ending was especially rough for it, with two consecutive boss-fights that were pretty boring both narratively and gameplay-wise, in large part because the Fantasy Adventure-stuff was weighed down by the Crime and Conspiracy stuff, which wasn't that cohesive or well-developed.

In terms of gameplay this was a blast. Perhaps a bit more complexity and strategy could've been injected, but stuff like your entire supporting cast technically traveling with you, thus allowing you to shuffle your party on the fly, was a nice touch that also fixed the ever-present issue with optional party members in JRPGs, where some of your characters would sit in the hub, not participating in the story. And overall, the bombastic presentation of Yakuza combat was pushed to the limit here, and I can't wait to see what crazy shit they're going to do with Joryu in the sequel.

P.S.
I honestly don't like the fact that Kiryu is returning in the sequel, it felt like we're turning a new leaf here, with this ever-growing cast of supporting characters and an idealistic shonen protag to bond with them. But now we're just back to Kiryu? And any party member after Nanba wouldn't be returning? Kinda sucks man.