117 reviews liked by Philadelphia


Every year I hear of an indie game "inspired by the golden era of JRPGs" and every year I am disappointed more than the last. One day people will learn how to make a good (keyword: good) classic JRPG, but today is not that day.

Looking back at the times where I played this game for the first time, Xenoblade Chronicles was the first game I played where its story, characters, world building and everything related to that was so important. I used to only play Mario and Zelda games, and probably something more mainstream from the PS3 and stuff, and when I played this game I was so blown away that I can't really describe it. It is just my favorite game ever and probably nothing will ever top it.

Borderlands 3 has it's ups and downs.
I've put 55 hours into the game and mostly enjoyed it.

Positive:
+ Gameplay is super fluid and rewarding
+ the impact some new weapons have
+ the last cutscene and the credits
+ some of the humor was pretty entertaining
+ not a single gamecrash or "open world trap"

Negative:
- the Calypsos are so annoying to any grown up human being
- TOO MUCH loot for my taste
- not every joke is funny, some are aweful
- the last two missions: more of the same enermies, bosses became hardcore bullet sponges

If they will ever release Borderlands 4 I hope they cast a new writing crew. The gameplay is still rock solid, but with better writing and some new ideas for the final Boss Borderlands 3 could have been great.

First of all: I'm still playing it. So this is not a final rating.
BUT there are some things I just have to write down because they are so bad I don't understand why so many people like XB2.

- The dialogue with NPCs aside from the main quests are awful! Rex repeats the same sentence again and again. They don't add anything to the world, the people or the overall feeling.
- side quests don't respect your time! Neither are they interesting nor varied. There are three types of side quests: Fetch Quests, Kill Quests and Talking Quest. All of them are like this: Go somewhere, fetch/kill/talk, get back, get ANOTHER quest, go there, fetch/kill/talk, get back, get your reward.
- Enemies are tanks / "bullet sponges". If you fight 1-2 enemies that are ~ your level you will fight them for several minutes. EVERY ENEMY takes about 1-2 mins to kill. And you get almost nothing for fighting them. 40 exp when you need 4000 exp to level up. Let's assume 100 fights take about say 2min per fight. That makes 3 hours to level up. Sounds fun? Sure not. To be honest you get a lot more exp if you complete missions (yeah.. these "fun" side missions,too.). But should fighting enemies not be rewarding too?
- The Map is garbage. OMG is the map bad. It basically shows you nothing. How to get to your next quest marker? Find it out by yourself. The map flat, non texturized and way to small.
- The overall game menu is complicated in a bad way. Find your Missions in the Missionlog. But they are not shown on the map because first you have to activate the mission, then go to the map menu, scroll through all your map pages (yeah.. it has several pages) to find the correct one. Why isn't there ONE detailed map you can open by the push of a button? One that you can zoom in and out. A map so many other game did so much better.

I just can not understand why this game has so many fans. The gameplay flaws are so HUGE. I will wait for the story to unfold and i will finish it (i think...). Maybe i will have a clue then. Maybe the story is worth it. Maybe gameplay will feel better or maybe i will get used to all this stuff. Maybe..

With this game I got my wife to play a videogame (and she did well). That alone should be reason enough to give 5*. But a couple of levels where not enjoyable and stressed us in a bad way. And the fact that (in multiplayer) attacking with your costumepower and picking/throwing your partner are mapped to the same button feels unexpected weak/lazy/bad for a First party Mario game.

Overall we had about 12-15 funny hours.

Yes there is hype about BD3. And usually I hate overhyped games. But BD3 is a really really good game.. maybe one of the best ever made.
I love the characters, the freedom you have (exploring your surroundings is actually fun) and the intense battles.
It easily could be a 5-star game.. but at the moment it has some flaws. Act 3 did not run very well on my PC (had to turn on DLSS performance mode), some (not many) quests where buggy and I put myself into a dead end somehow by complete a row of quests in a certain way that led to the point on which I had to load a save game many hours ago.
Not really a gamebreaker but this should simply not be possible. Therefor "only" 4.5 Stars.
If you ask yourself if it is really as good as everyone is saying.. then just give it a chance. I was surprised in a positive way.

This is the only Sherlock Holmes game i've played. And I really thought I would enjoy it more.
I just love Cthulhu based games/movies. But Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is just "boring". The gameplay is so painfully slow, the "mindgames" in which you have to put hints into order are not fun. I got to a point where is just checked walkthroughs because the game and my brain where not compatible. For example I thought "yeah use this hint. It makes sense." but the games wants another hint instead. And this happened all the time.
Therefor it robbed almost all the fun I had with the setting.

I can understand why these games have their community. But Sherlock Holmes games are not for me.

Dead Island 2 is the game i've never thought i would play. After many delays it was doomed to fail. But suddenly it has been released and it is way better than the first games.
Everything looks, sounds and feels AAA although it is not a tripleA game. The world is interesting and packed with items, secrets and shortcuts. The voice acting (Amy) is superb.

I really enjoyed my time with it. The only upset was the finale. But Up until Chapter 24 it was a wild ride with far more ups than downs. Well done Dambuster!

What a weak Remedy game.
Considering I loved Alan Wake (1) and I liked Alan Wake 2, Quantum Break and the Max Payne Series I am shocked how bad Control is compared to all of them.
Everything lookes the same, the gameplay is mediocre at best and the overall Story was disappointing to me. It had such build up but totally failed at the end. Wow am I glad I can finally delete it from my drive. :-p
Why 3*? Because it is not the worst game I have ever played. But it is the worst Remedy game I have ever played.

Alan Wake is one of my all time favorites. Bright Falls is beautiful, the story is driven ALL THE TIME by letters, Alan's thoughts, the radio Show, cutscenes,...
Gameplay is fine for a 360/PS3 game.
There is so much to love about this Game.
If I had to name a negative thing: The amount of enemies. There are sections where you have to rush through level sections because enemies will spawn endlessly but the Game does not tell you this.