Recent reviews by Shepherd

This is a game that abuses your free time and constantly reminds you that there's more important things you can do in your life. Use the valuable time given to you on this Earth to exercise, learn a useful trade or skill, write novels about your dreams, do your chores, or spend time with your loved ones.
If you already wasted your money on GTA V and can no longer refund it, play Story Mode & FiveM for GTA Online.

Here's a short list of flaws in GTA Online that will remind you why this game doesn't deserve your time:
- Potential for Infinite Loading Screens on every loading screen. Increased chances in populated lobbies.
- High potential for infinite loading screens when starting heists like Cayo Perico, forcing you to restart the game or potentially your entire machine.
- Potential for the player to be completely frozen in a single spot - unable to move, turn or pause the game.
- Indestructible small obstacles such as shrubs and bushes cause vehicles to come to a grinding halt.
- Every single important interaction is lazily implemented through the Interaction Menu.
- Applying healing & armor in a vehicle can only be performed using the Interaction Menu.
- In-game chat was removed from Online.
- The Oppressor Mark II.
- NPC's still have random instances of hyper-accuracy and absurd fire rate, insta-killing your player. In addition, NPC’s can land shots that are otherwise impossible for the player to
- Inconsistent and poorly telegraphed stealth against NPC's.
- NPC’s (passive & hostile) are well-known to deliberately crash into your vehicles and sabotage you, especially at high speeds. Hostile NPC’s can have vehicles with increased mass, allowing smaller vehicles to run you off the road. In GTA V Enhanced, this is made even worse with animals that will walk into high traffic areas and position themselves in front of you.
- Unrelenting, unskippable phonecalls - some of which can result in your character’s death because they cannot be hung-up.
- Worn out the A/X buttons on our controllers because it took Rockstar a decade to add "Hold A/X to sprint".
- Player businesses give almost no money to any friends who worked with you, completely disincentivizing doing jobs with your friends.
- Player businesses can be inconveniently under attack. Failing to rescue your business will result in it being completely reset.
- Game is littered with shameless time-wasting design choices, such as the initial flight to Cayo Perico being seven minutes or more, or cargo source/ sell mission taking place across the entire map.
- The bloatware that is Rockstar Game Launcher & Rockstar Club, required for the whopping eight titles that Rockstar has on PC.
- GTA+.
- Rockstar very openly does not listen to player concerns, because addressing them would actually make the game enjoyable.
- GTA Online is notoriously insecure. Cheaters and script kiddies can still gain an alarming amount of information related to your machine and network simply from you being in the same lobby with them. Some can even use this information to compromise your machine or network, allowing them to perform DDoS attacks or even summon a SWAT team to your home in real life. From this alone, Valve should de-list this game from Steam.

I hope some Chicom gacha game completely usurps GTA’s throne as the go-to open world game, so that maybe Rockstar will tap into their 22.5 Billion dollar net worth and unlimited talent pool to either sunset GTA V Online on a high note, or make sure GTA VI Online is not abysmal dogs***.

This game is amazing.

Developer really needs to hire a PR team, though.

It's his year.

- Shadow Generations -
Running on the Hedgehog Engine 2 (same as Sonic Frontiers), this game is not only visually impressive, but is probably the most innovative gameplay-wise. I mention the engine, because it allows for this game to have awesome detail and still run at a smooth 120 FPS.
The story was more than I was expecting. Written by Ian Flynn (writer of the Sonic Comics), the story takes a comprehensive yet brief look at Shadow's character, and even partially expands the story. I personally believe the story was excellent, because the only criticism I have is that it ends. You won't get an experience that's as long as Sonic Generations, but it's a great addition if you're new to Sonic Generations already.

That's not to say there aren't issues, but the ones that I have are more fundamental - such as Sonic Team/ SEGA's choice of levels. The game starts off very strong, but it runs out of steam towards the end. For a game that's a celebration of Shadow, there's one particular stage that doesn't fit him whatsoever. Ironically, it might be also be the weakest stage in the game.

Overall, it was a great story that I was keen to experience myself, and I'm very glad that I did.

- Sonic Generations -
It pains me to say there aren't any massive changes in this re-release of Sonic Generations almost 13 years later. I played a lot of Sonic Generations on Xbox 360 and PC prior to this game's release, so I started with Shadow Generations - and now that I have, I'm very sad to say that none of the unique aspects of Shadow's campaign make it to Sonic's.
Sonic Generations is, except for a handful of small changes, a 1:1 of the 2011 version.

The single-most glaring issue for me is that Sonic Generations runs only from 30-60 FPS. After 13 years, I was really hoping Sonic Team could manage 120-144 FPS to accommodate modern hardware and modernize the game a bit more. You might think it's nit-picky, but I don't think that was a huge ask for $60.

In the end, it's still Sonic Generations. It's not bad at all (in fact, it's arguably one of the best), but If you were hoping they threw in some more levels or content besides the Casino Night DLC, I've got some bad news for you.

In short, I don't recommend you buy this game at $50-60. I recommend waiting for $30 or less.
But Shadow Generations does have Big the Cat, so I might have to put my bias aside and give it the 1,000/10 it deserves, it's just that peak.

I became so unbelievably powerful on my second loop that I - through means I will never understand - managed to kill myself with a heatsink.

300/10.