Recent reviews by ɠųąཞɖıąŋ ąŋɠɛƖ!

(mini-review.)

There are too many HoMM clones on PC, Mac, Linux and iOS to waste time on one that's as uninspired as this one. Bland lore. Bland, overly-pixelated vintage art. Bland factions. Bland units. Bland combat. A game that feels like an AI-assisted graduation project for a HoMM 1 fan, saddled with overly-complex mechanics.

It might be worth $5 but more than that and it's a stretch. At least it runs well...

Not worth the time. There are 20-year old, better games available.

6.5/10.
Bland Conquest.

Wasteland 3 is an isometric RPG in the same vein as Wasteland 2, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Divinity: Original Sin. It also sits squarely in this echelon of games, based on its writing, mechanics, atmosphere and performance. Wasteland 3 transpires in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality where the Cold War never avoided a nuclear holocaust and survivors eke out a hardscrabble existence among mutants and robots. Character customization is good. Mechanics and game play feel mostly well thought-out. Graphics are mediocre. Voice acting and music are a mixed bag.

The plot vacillates between darkly unforgiving in tone and Borderlands-esque in its tongue and cheek humor. The schizophrenic dichotomy of storytelling often falls flat and serves as to detract from the game. The core game play is disasterously implemented with many boss fights being artificially enhanced for plot purposes. Additionally, many builds will work properly until the game suddenly decides they shouldn't. For example, the after lawn mowing the game on Hard with a friend, I ran into a buzzsaw in the final two battles, where even peons had 3 times my health and all could one-shot me despite having 4x their armor values. It is important to note that the game, even after all this time is a buggy mess, with character interaction glitches, crashes to desktop and graphical malfunctions being regular occurrences.

The game does have a compelling multiplayer cooperative mode and, if for nothing else, playing with a friend and eliciting absurd results is worth the effort. Worth to pick up on a sale and with some friends but don't expect too much.

Worth a look.

7/10.

Owlcat is simply not the RPG house I want them to be and this will likely be the last game of theirs I procure. WotR is a simple RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate, but hamstrung by a parade of amateurish decisions that do nothing but detract from the game's experience. Is it the cartoony, painterly graphics? They're charming in their own way and it's admirable for a developer to run Unity as their engine but the game's performance is pathetic and the game visually feels like a throwback from 10 years ago. The music is amazing but the voice acting is putrid and often-times unintentionally hilarious. Is it the game play that has unbeatable bosses to further along staid story lines only to be steamrolled a few hours later?

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3409501672

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3411466353

No, the worst part of this game has to be the absolute propagandized, cancerous woke infection that ravages every inch of the game. Abyssal, misunderstood hybrids in every corner of a world that makes "high magic" seem like Conan the Barbarian in comparison. Demon elves dating/flirting with dwarves. Everyone using pithy Chandler Bing-esque quips. Perhaps the best part is when you are placed in the service of a butch, verbally abusive half-orc lesbian (Not an insult...I'm serious) in the first 5 hours of game play. You know, because you have to do it, right Owlcat?

Who needs customers when you can showcase how you've never experienced true adversity in your life. This game is a joke. A fantasy RPG lives and dies by its world-building and writing. Owlcat absolutely sucks at this and they refuse to improve. I'll never finish this and there goes $30 down the toilet.

Avoid this game.

4.5/10.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) is the sequel to the re-imagined Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019). The game features some frenetic firefights, lavish visuals and more spy-on-spy action than you can shake a stick at. Despite all these qualities, it is perhaps one of the most disappointing Call of Duty entries in years and serves as a testament to how Infinity Ward has lost their way and need to regroup. The game fails at almost every single game play objective it set out to achieve and, consequently, misses an opportunity to catapult itself to the upper echelon of contemporary, AAA first person shooters.

Starting with the positives, CoD: MW II has truly beautiful, atmospheric and performant next generation graphics. Volumetric lightning, HDR, character models and map architecture are all top notch and it is a joy to finally see CoD take its place as a graphics powerhouse befitting from such a venerable, AAA studio. The game's voice acting and soundtrack are excellent and global sound effects like ancillary sounds/bullet travel help create a believable environment. Gun play is sublime, with punchy, differentiated weapons and a variety of applicable add-ons. CoD includes a battery of game play modes including singleplayer, multiplayer, co-op and more. The game is truly performant and netted a respectable, upscaled 95 fps @ 4K high on a 6 year old Radeon VII.

Unfortunately, that's where the positives end. The title suffers from staid, repetitive missions, frustratingly over-long set pieces, absurd game play events and perhaps one of the most foolhardy plot lines I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing. While you get the usual fare in this game, including A-120 strikes, Republique-style ally guided missions and the plethora of sniper missions/night vision assaults, the game has been assembled, lacking even the most basic game play testing. Enemies will spawn behind you, walk through walls or camp behind objects, only to shoot you as you cross into their field of view. At moderate-high difficulty levels, this type of AI programming and map design prove extremely frustrating and unfair, requiring multiple play-throughs to complete. The AI vacillates between bouts of telepathy, x-ray vision and abject stupidity, often being able to see you in an adjacent room, through three walls and other times missing a pile of dead cohorts just a few feet away.

It is this terrible mission design and piss-poor AI that punishes CoD: MW II so much, since the game is based on numerous stealth/avoidance missions. What should be a tense game of cat and mouse quickly ends up becoming a litany of AI exploits instead to simply progress to the next malformed set piece. At one point, while trying to stealthily infiltrate the Mexican drug lord Sin Nombre's mansion, I acquired the attention of several guards. I happened to be in a bathroom, with no windows, on the second floor at the time. The guards were all on the first floor, outside of the structure, not that it mattered.

The game quick saved the occurrence and I soon found myself dying over and over and unable to reset the stealth parameters of the mission. How did I bypass the issue? I camped the bathroom, and shot henchmen as they teleported into the bathroom and walked through the door. After slaying about 20 goons, I had created an almost impossible to traverse, 4-foot pile of bodies clogging the bathroom door, which protected me from the incoming hail of gunfire and grenades. I completed my duties and calmly proceeded with the mission. Easy? Sure. Satisfying? Hardly.

Unfortunately this happens over and over and over in CoD: MW II. Stealth is terribly realized and almost always it's easier to cheese the AI than actually play the game as intended. For example, during the final mission against Hassan, the final boss, you are disarmed and forced to play cat-and-mouse with two of his annoyingly cheesy, armored goons. They have automatic weapons and you're forced to dash around, hoovering all the ingredients you can find so you can craft rudimentary tools and weapons. Unfortunately, the AI glitched and the enemies soon kept running behind me, impossible to shake.

No amount of ducking behind corners, memorized quick-play bomb defusing key presses or flat out sprinting kept them away from me, as they would simply pop into existence and teleport right next to me, firing away. I beat them both by hiding behind a door as they impotently punched it trying to incapacitate me. I calmly defused the bomb and then sprinted past them when I was done, to find the missing materials I needed to craft the necessary tools and weapons. This happens *all the time*. It felt like a dullard type of an FPS Elden Ring.

The plot fares no better with a primitive, uninteresting tale about multinational super spy, wokejob strike teams, stolen stinger missiles and a mismatched, Frankensteined quilt of enemies including Iran, Mexican drug cartels, Shadow Company and the US military. Oh and of course the Russians are in there too. You play as Gaz or Soap but skip any lengthy bouts as the infinitely cooler elder statesmen Price and Ghost. You kill most targets as your AI stands behind impotently as you proceed from one inane mission to the next, often undoing the very thing you accomplished minutes earlier. This is especially egregious when you spend two different missions capturing dangerously murderous Iranian terrorists and Mexican drug lords, only to be forced to release them without any information, simply because they demand you do so in the name of legality and justice.

Multiplayer is no better with an abusive, rotten environment, predicated on feeding whales an ever-larger stash of multiplayer trash that they can use to show off as they play in multiplayer matches. Want to jump in and experience intelligent matchmaking that will pit you against similarly-skilled enemies? That is a pipe dream. In over 3/4 of my 20 online matches I routinely faced teams of 1250+ level players against my rag-tag squad of single-digit noobs, wannabes and mid-level players. Do you want to play a game where you can craft a build, choose the weapon of your choice and have fun? Forget about having that kind of freedom in Cod: MW II. You start using demonstrably weaker weapons and unlock newer, stronger, more accurate, farther-striking weapons after sickening amounts of MMO-like grind. Mods, perks, and even the dearth of decent cosmetic items are all locked behind Great Wall of China-sized walls of insurmountable grind. Heaven help you if you jump into this game a few years after release.

To level and unlock new loot, you need to accrue experience, and win matches but it's precisely the lack of necessary tools that will hamper your ability to do so. Players all ramble on in group chat, to the detriment of tense, interesting games. You find yourself muting everyone, so you can hear important auditory cues and excise what little bit of social interaction this game has available. Most players are toxic and those few that aren't, don't stick around long enough to help make the game more bearable. CoD: MW II is badly assembled, causing me to crash half a dozen times. While some were simple fixes that required a quick execution of Task Manager, two particular crashes lead to black screens that required a system restart. Worse, the restarts damaged the graphics driver and I was forced to enact a MS System Restore (thankfully) to salvage the system.

With better and more mature/coherent plotting, more forgiving and rewarding multiplayer and better attention to the campaign game play, CoD: MW II had the chance to secure a score of a 9 or 10 and exist as a sterling example of FPS gaming. Instead, much like its hollow ending, the title is just a bitter reminder of the lazy, disinterested job carried out by Infinity Ward.

Not worth the time. There are better games available.

6.5/10.

Lords of the Fallen is a souls-like made by new developer Hexworks. The title has all the same tropes of a Demon/Dark Souls or Elder Ring offering, including fierce combat, spells, weaponry, numerous and hideous enemies, as well as monstrous bosses. You'll have to master various skills in order to banish the dark, demon god, Adyr, from Mournstead and cleanse the land of the evil that has infected every aspect of life. Along the way, you'll recruit allies that will assist you in accumulating gear or combating bosses. You'll also use a powerful spiritual instrument called an Umbral Lamp, that will allow you to become functionally immortal and to travel the umbral spirit plane to proceed on your quest. As a Lampbearer, you will harness the power of the cosmic horror Putrid Mother, to defeat Adyr before it is too late.

Combat in in Lords of the Fallen is similar to that in Dark Souls or Elden Ring. If you like the combat in the those other games and you're looking for more, you'll enjoy Lords of the Fallen, with a variety of light, heavy, charged and poised attacks, as well as blocking, parrying, dodging and other abilities that allow you to vanquish a variety of enemies. To improve your abilities, you'll gain experience that you can apply towards increasing your base statistics and you'll also be able to use catalysts to wield powerful spells. A myriad of weapons exist within Lords of the Fallen, including swords, hammers, maces, daggers, knives, spears, polearms, and a many different types of ranged weapons. You target opponents and attack with combos based on your build's strengths and abilities. For the most part, combat feels good.

Traversal is a bit more of a mixed bag, with mild platforming becoming an issue at times due to poor character response or limited camera controls. While the game's traversal includes sprinting, jumping and evading, be prepared to replay tracts of areas due to mistakes beyond your control. Additionally, enemies at times gain free hits and your strikes may sail harmlessly through targets. The environment may block your attacks but not those of your foes. The arbitrary nature of such events can become frustrating and, when taken into account with unblockable attacks, chain stun locks or other similar events, can lead to substantial displeasure with the game.

That isn't to say that such events happen all the time or that the combat is completely soiled by such concerns but it definitely detracts from the game. This is a shame because Lords of the Fallen employs a new innovation: umbral traveling, which really adds a new dimension to the game and elevates the exploratory aspects of Lords of the Fallen to new heights. By using the Umbral Lantern, you can see the spirit world, superimposed over the real plane, often illuminating obscured secrets or exposing hidden paths forwards. It's a neat mechanic and one that was used with substantial creativity. The lamp can even be used during combat to stagger or kill enemies. Traversal through the umbral plane is perilous however and, as you spend more and more time in the plane, you run the risk of alerting truly powerful entities of your location. Such creatures can slay you and allow you to lose all your progress until you can reacquire your lost vigor (XP).

Lords of the Fallen has beautiful graphics powered by Unreal Engine 5, with support for modern upscaling like FSR 3. The game has atmosphere in spades and is a far more mature, well fleshed-out aesthetic to Enden Ring's "Legend of Zelda" vibe. The voice acting, audio and sound track are all well executed and, as a whole, the game is reasonably performant. It's unfortunate that despite running well that the Lords of the Fallen has severe issues with AMD-based graphics cards, especially those that are based on Polaris or Vega architectures. The game mandates AMD drivers that are simply not available for Vega-based cards and towards my second play through, Lords of the Fallen began to crash routinely, over and over and over, every 5-10 minutes. Such an experience put a definite damper on my enjoyment of the game.

It's a shame because the moral, political, religious and conceptual aspects of the game's world are interesting and the world, in my opinion, is far more baroque and alluring than that of Elden Ring's more sterile atmosphere. The game even has cooperative and PVP multiplayer components. As a player, you can enter another gamer's campaign instance and challenge them to combat, impeding their progress and serving the will of Adyr. Conversely, friends can easily join instances together, meet at spawn points called Vestiges, and play through the campaign together. Such cooperative play isn't necessary but adds a new social and game play dynamic to Lords of the Fallen that allows it to operate more like Dungeons and Dragons at times than simply a coop souls-like.

All in all, despite its technical issues, Hexworks has done a great job with the unfairly maligned Lords of the Fallen. Combat, exploration and character building are fun and the developers hit it out of the park with both collaborative game mechanisms as well as innovations like umbral traversal. If you're looking for a great souls-like that will show you a few new things, you can do a lot worse than Lords of the Fallen.

Recommended!

8.5/10.
Really looking forward to Lords of the Fallen 2.

A re-imagining of the 2007 masterpiece, the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare does some things exceptionally well, and some quite badly, resulting in a good but ultimately uneven experience. Technically the game vacillates between impressive and surprisingly lazy. The game has truly sublime character models, excellent effects and some expertly crafted environments, but most maps have painfully poor models and rough textures, falling short of the promised "next-generation visuals". Audio and voice acting are superb. Game runs reasonably stably and performant.

The campaign is 8 hours long, with some inspired set pieces, like Picadilly Circle, Farah's youth-nightmare, some night-vision incursions and the like. Some missions are boring and trite however, and some previously excellent plot points from the original are very conspicuously absent (ship escape, caught in the nuke, Price's sniping mission). The plot is neither as mature nor as tactically rich as the original, devolving into more cartoonish Netflix-derived action series tropes. The game also has a woke undercurrent that undermines the serious tone of the story. For each Farah youth mission, you have another where she and 3 female, rebel insurgents in wicker sandals decimate 300 Russian soldiers.

Multiplayer is a bit of a disaster. Playing the game today, five years after release is a big ask. However, Infinity Ward and Activision don't even hide their attempt to monetize your participation by guiding you towards Warzone and other incredibly unfair multiplayer modes. Even now, half a decade after release, you start multiplayer games, both competitive and co-op with almost no real equipment to speak of and you are expected to grind, often at a monumental disadvantage, to amass even a small amount of toys that can improve your combat efficacy. Many modes have atrocious match-making with teams wantonly stacked in one favor. Other modes are abject ghost towns and unplayable as a result.

Gun play is good, traversal is there and weapon variety is solid. In multiplayer, time to kill is too low to encourage skill play and, instead, leans towards "response gods", "first drop", "back-stabbing", or "best toy wins". Ultimately, Apex or Quake, this ain't and it shows in combat with some players camping corners for days or sniping from towers across the map, without ever helping their team in any meaningful way. The title is absurdly large, weighing in at over 240 GB, most likely because it includes other Call of Duty Modern Warfare iterations and Warzone packaged alongside it. Rating this game is difficult because I get the feeling that the title would be a better value on release.

As a result, the conditional review for the new 2019 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare hinges on when you purchased the title and how much you bought it for. I'd recommend this game today for its solid but often unspectacular and ending-bereft campaign and for a few hours of multiplayer distraction. Just don't expect to get a lot of value out of this title today, especially in multiplayer and make sure you nab the game at $20 USD or less, since it isn't worth more than that.

Worth a look.

7/10.

So many games nowadays focus or depend on wanton violence or inane/illogical puzzling to keep a player entertained. Very few titles use solid storytelling and captivating atmosphere to attract an audience. Thankfully, Copycat is one of those games that still believes in the importance of a good story. You play the part of Dawn, an adopted cat, who through a series of unfortunate circumstances, are separated from your owner, Olive. You must go through a series of adventures to return home, all while you wrestle with your primal feline nature, and the harsh realities of life. Can you go home again, however, when another cat takes your place?

Copycat has a lovely, painterly aesthetic and rewarding, yet simplistic traversal and puzzling. This title is the perfect Trojan horse to introduce a non-gamer into gaming. The game's story puts you in the life of an adopted cat and sells the story so well that you become invested in both humans and felines alike. The ending, which is very satisfying, ties all the elements together but you need to wait through the credits for the real conclusion. Experience basic movement, climbing/traversal, Temple Run dodging bits, QT combat, QT hunting, surprisingly well-executed bouts of stealth, investigation and play all through the eyes of a cat, via extremely primitive puzzles.

Copycat has weaknesses. Copycat isn't performant and the game is simplistic, at best, in nature. Some of the puzzles amount to a glorified typing tutor application and the game is brutally short, taking a scant 3-4 hours with heavy exploration. For a game with excellent voice work, great music, and a memorable premise, these errors are all forgivable.

Copycat is on sale for under 10 dollars. For a beautiful tale about what it means to be family, especially during the holiday season, it's worth it. You won't likely replay it over and over again but it will stay with you and its impact will make you a gentler, better person for it.

Purrrfect storytelling.

Worth a look.

7/10.

(mini-review).

Hot off the Masterpiece that was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and the commercial successes of Modern Warfare 2 & 3, Infinity Ward returns without its leadership to crap out Ghosts, a title so insipidly bland and emotionally disingenuous that you can almost see the inflection point where Activision took its dive into complete irrelevance. The story premise is simple: You're the son of an elite operative called a Ghost. You and your brother join that self-same team under the leadership of your father, to catch another ex-Ghost that helped South America destroy the U.S...blah blah blah. The story is nonsensical garbage.

Gun play is mediocre. AI is abjectly awful. Combat is purposefully cheap and abusive. The graphics are perhaps the nadir of the series, with photocopied, sepia-toned wasteland after wasteland. The game has a few interesting set-pieces, like all Call of Duties, but this game lacks the gravitas, tension and gun play of its predecessors. Multiplayer is dead and the game, even on a hefty sale, is hardly worth it with a forgettable, formulaic, moronic campaign of 6 hours.

Not worth the time. There are much better games available. Press L Mouse and R Mouse to uninstall this piece of crap, especially after such an unsatisfying and absurd ending.

6/10.

Let's get this out of the way quickly. If you're wondering if Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is worth purchasing, the answer is indubitably yes. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is a masterpiece and represents the pinnacle of adventure gaming on any platform. The title follows Nathan Fi.. Drake, his relationship with his brother, Sam, their family history, his struggling marriage with Elena Fisher, paternal friendship with Sullivan and, ultimately, his struggle to define himself, his passions, his responsibilities and his family. The game is a single player adventure game that is replete with incredible set pieces and a truly fulfilling ending.

To say that Uncharted 4 is a beautiful game is an understatement. From the game's aesthetics, to its expansive and historically conscious world-building to its protagonists' builds/dress/camber, Uncharted is obsessively meticulous about its visual presentation. As a result, when combined with the fluid character animations and its excellent graphics performance, Uncharted 4 is a triumph of how AAA-level visuals can truly elevate a game experience to something special. Uncharted 4 also has excellent voice acting, a great musical score and wonderful, world-building sound effects. All of this stimulating media combines with excellent directing and storytelling to provide a fantastic tale.

And boy, does the tale deliver. The Uncharted franchise had its job cut out for it, with many perceiving it to be a rote copy of an Indiana Jones and Lara Croft mash-up but through steady world-building, Uncharted 4 now stands as a legitimate adventure IP in its own right, interestingly eclipsing the often-neglected Tomb Raider franchise. Uncharted 4 has a plethora of likable and deep protagonists, that interact in interesting and reasonable ways with each other. Ahead of the pack is Nathan Drake, who is a complex, real person caught in extraordinary events, coping with a slew of obligations and challenges. To say that Uncharted 4 would make an exceptional season of television streaming is an understatement, with surprises, twists, turns and a helluva climax.

Uncharted 4 tells the tale of Nathan and Sam, orphan brothers that were separated after a botched attempt to locate the lost pirate colony of Libertalia. Nathan goes on to have a series of fantastic adventures, discovering El Dorado, Shambala and a myriad of other archaeological discoveries and eventually settles down with the capable and formidable reporter Elena Fisher, when Sam enters his life once again. Risking to upend his new stable life with Elena and to collapse the bonds of friendship with others like Sully, Nathan agrees to help Sam find Libertalia. What happens next is a race against time to beat an old, ruthless business associate from finding the colony, while dodging and defending against a paramilitary group of mercenaries that been hired to kill them and secure the treasure.

Throughout the course of the game, Nathan and company travel to various locales, including Scotland, Madagascar, tropical islands and other locations. Nathan must use his wits, his climbing skills and archaeological knowledge to discover what truly happened to the colony, while saving everything that matters in his life. The game includes all sorts of set pieces from ancient graveyards, sepulchers and castles, to sleek mansions, posh auctions, bazaars, clock towers, and islands teeming with pirate traps and untouched riches. All environments are staggeringly rendered and beautifully presented.

While the game moves relatively linearly, it forgoes the illusion of choice and large, expansive worlds to instead shepherd the player through a parade of extraordinarily polished experiences and set pieces that would keep any non-jaded gamer's jaw firmly planted on the floor. Vehicle chases, battles against armored APCs, multi-level shootouts and even a cutlass duel in a sinking pirate ship conflagration await the audience within Uncharted 4. Throughout it all, the game plays beautifully with excellent character handling. Nathan and company sprint, jump, mantle, climb, swing, fight, and dodge all how you would expect them to move in a game of this caliber. Shooting play is rock solid with a wide variety of weapons. Stealth is complex, rewarding and well-executed.

In short, Uncharted 4 is the closest thing you can play to simulate living an action-adventure serial/movie in 2024. It is exquisite and well worth your time and money, at any sale price. I've avoided the DLC The Lost Legacy because Uncharted 4 is more than worth your money and, truth be told, the Lost Legacy is a shallow echo of its patron game. The Lost Legacy deals with Chloe Frazier and her cohort Nadine Ross, in a race in India, to find the tusk of Ganesha, an artifact of both power and wealth. While the premise is good and Chloe is a well-known and liked character of previous Uncharted adventures, the DLC is is a big miss most notably attributable to the massive woke infection that promptly consumed Naughty Dog proceeding the release of Uncharted 4.

While beautifully visually realized and with good production values, The Lost Legacy is tone deaf in giving gamers what they want and reproducing what was so special in Uncharted 4. Characters are relatively unlikable and arrogant to a fault. They are heartless and opportunistic up until a moment when the plot decides they are not and the game reproduces all the game play mechanics from Uncharted 4, without addressing how the weaker Chloe would address challenges instead of the larger, stronger Nathan. Animations are 1-1 the same, (including melee combat to a hilarious effect), and the inclusion of villain/killer Nadine Ross in the title, her rapid conversion to protagonist and whitewashing of her crimes and brutality make the story ring hollow.

Ultimately, the DLC fails because it falls into the trap of "she does it better-ism". Chloe ultimately stumbles upon a hidden Indian city that is literally dotted with mile-high statue, after mile-high statue, as well as 50-story temples and underground caves that are the size of 10 football fields, filled with massive, ornate, reliefs and impossibly complex, multi-gear automations that appear more at home in a Geiger-esque Alien film, than in a pre-Roman civilization. Aqueducts, complex gearing, combustive chemistry, predicative astronomy it turns out that the Indians did it all first... and better. It gets absurd and the one-upping "up-to-eleven" tone of the game becomes ridiculous, causing gamers to become quite jaded by the end. As an aside, character models also take a step down with Chloe looking neither as realistic nor charming as Nathan and giving more than a few "more than meets the eye" vibes.

None of that matters however. The Lost Legacy is just icing on an already unparalleled cake and Uncharted 4 easily carries any gamer's purchase. The Lost Legacy's polish and execution are strong enough to serve as nice post-credit content and should be considered only as such.

Bottom line, when considering Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, the verdict is simple, especially in light of the waning that the Indiana Jones IP has suffered as of late: Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is a masterclass game and a must-buy. A helluva ride.

Highest possible recommendation.

9.5/10.

(mini-review.)

What do you get when you grab the Division 2, put it in the middle of an antiseptic "latin american"-themed wilderness, replete with kludgy performance, uninspired graphics and mediocre game play? You get Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands. If this game were more repetitive and rote, I'd be the first 4 levels of an MMO. In fact, at times, that's exactly what it feels like, without the interesting traversal, cover systems and shooting of better looter shooters. The plot is non-existent and the title has some of the most abysmal driving I have ever seen, anywhere. While the game has multiplayer options, I'd rather return to Division 2 or some other contemporary than sink additional hours to this title. This is all too bad because the concept of playing as military/law enforcement forces against drug families in Bolivia is extremely enticing.

It's boring and plain. You're better off spending time with family, participating in a hobby or learning a trade. That part where your 4-wheel drive jeep handles like an up-ended podium sliding on a muddy hill...

Not worth the time. There are better games available.

6.5/10.