Recent reviews by [cc'] nimorrax_

The reboot to Doom after years of silence. A return to form where you simply run and gun your enemies down. It retains some minor horror elements from the third game, but nowhere near to the same degree. The environments are pretty to look at and it's all mostly grounded on Mars at the UAC.

The game starts you off with the pistol just like classic Doom, it has infinite ammo and a charged shot. It introduces you both to shooting and the brand new Glory Kill system. When you do enough damage to an enemy, they begin to flash blue/orange. Depending on the angle you come at this dazed enemy from, you can perform a unique Glory Kill animation on them. The big selling point of the game.

The game quickly hands you your shotgun and has you getting to work. The Imp is introduced and wow dude, why are they so agile and aggressive? They have an insane charged fireball attack too. Imps are the main reason I don't try this game on Nightmare.

The music is a banger and composed by Mick Gordon, every track has you wanting to rip and tear. BFG Division is certainly the most popular one of all the tracks.

The game also comes with multiplayer in which you can deathmatch against other players using most of the singleplayer arsenal, as well as allowing you to become a Baron of Hell. It's alright, it's nothing incredible though. It's just Doom deathmatch.

Snapmap is the other multiplayer mode. It was quite limited at launch, however over time it was given a few updates and has become an incredibly versatile tool for creation while being beginner friendly. Not many tools can achieve this. Snapmap has some of the coolest maps I've ever seen put together by this community, though many of them are definitely just slop.

I'm also pleased with both of the boss fights we get in this game. The Cyberdemon is obviously one of them, I'll let you figure out who the other one is. Would definitely recommend to someone who wants a modern take on Doom.

I initially loathed a lot of the changes this Doom made after coming off of 2016's Doom. All of the jumping around and ♥♥♥♥ at first didn't sit well with me. They also made every weapon specialize in taking out certain types of demons, forcing you to swap between all of the weapons rather frequently.

Of course I didn't realize I actually really enjoyed this experience, because I was expecting more of basically what we got from 2016's Doom. I did not educate myself on how different Eternal was going to be when they were making it as I wanted to go in completely blind. Turns out that was a mistake for my first impressions.

This game takes 2016 and dials it up to 11. All of those cool weapon attachments that made your weapons simply stronger are now designed around countering specific enemy types.
The Chainsaw is mandatory in maintaining your ammunition.
The Flame Belch is mandatory for maintaining your armor.
The Blood Punch maintains your health and counters certain enemy types.
The Dash keeps you constantly on the move and in the air.
Both grenade types are crowd control tools

Almost every part of your arsenal is necessary for combat in this game instead of being optional like in 2016. When you got a new gun in 2016, you could stick with that gun for the rest of the game.
When you get a new gun in Eternal, it's trying to teach you how to effectively use your new toy.

Demons in this game have all been redesigned to look more like their classic Doom counterparts, with some exceptions like Imps and Barons. Some demons have defined weak points that need to be taken out by certain weapon attachments, like the Arachnotron's turret or Mancubus' cannons. Other demons are highly susceptible to certain weapon attachment combinations.

The combat feels mostly really nice, all of the guns are extremely punchy and powerful. Flying around in the air and raining hellfire down upon demons is truly a satisfying experience. It becomes amplified when you learn quick-swapping and are taking heavies out left and right.

Some of the projectile attacks in this game are genuinely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and will track you no matter how well you play, they'll even hit you as you try to Dash out of the way and it's extremely noticeable. The amount of times a Whiplash sends an attack at me that I've tried to side dash only for it to still connect is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ infuriating, can't even fly over it, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing still connects. Tyrants have this issue too with their tracking ground projectile.

Then comes the Marauder. Honestly ♥♥♥♥ this guy. He's insanely easy once you know how to combo him to death, but I am of the opinion he completely breaks the flow of the rest of the combat. He demands that you sit with him in mid-range, wait for his eyes to glow green and then shoot him during his attack.

If you shoot him any time before this, he just instantly absorbs it with a shield and summons a dog to hound you. Get too close and he Super Shotguns you, get too far and he throws axe projectiles at you. He's obnoxious and unfun, I would've settled for him being a one-time boss like the Gladiator.

Oh and the music is 100% a banger. Mick Gordon always delivers some banging metal tracks, this is absolutely no exception here. Almost every track will have you wanting to rip and tear demons for days.

70 Dollars for less and less than you've been getting from the previous two releases, with buggier and buggier mechanics. You've been ripped off, I've been ripped off.

The ultimate lesson with AAA studios is that they're stupid and always will be. Bigger does not mean better. Prettier graphics does not mean better. More polygons and textures do not make it better. Raytracing doesn't make it better.

In this title you got yourself 22 or so cinematic campaign missions (Doom is not a cinematic title), a few of which are silly linear shmup sections. The Atlan mech is underwhelming because you start and end missions in it, there's no major transition from Slayer to Atlan or Atlan to Slayer. The same applies to the Dragon.

What did previous doom entries give us? **Mostly** non-stop shooter violence action with copious amounts of blood and gore and some secret hunting. I don't want a more cinematic Doom, I want an un-interrupted experience where I rip and tear through hell and back.

I can't even restart a level if I happened to progress too far into it because I'm trying to have fun ripping and tearing. Why the stupid ♥♥♥♥ did you not include the Fast Travel system from Eternal in this game? Are you idiots? Do you actually think about what you develop?

If you fools at ID want to make a movie, go make a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ movie. It isn't **me** doing anything in those cutscenes you made, it's what you envisioned happening. That's not me.

There's also zero form of multiplayer in this Doom.
2016 had a Deathmatch and Snapmap modes.
Eternal had the 2v1 Battlemode.
Dark Ages has nothing.

Glad we cut the multiplayer for your ultra-cinematic experience. I will 100% give it to your art team, but it's also a waste of time and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

It just feels insanely lackluster compared to the previous two, which is an absurd statement to make when you consider the amount of enemies that can be on screen at once here. It's a hell of a lot.

But I can't stand AAA studios anymore. None of them are above criticism, none of them will ever get a free pass from me. Indie constantly puts AAA to shame and it shows with every release.

Is this game fun? Sure. When it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ works, it's a blast to play. But there's a ton of weird mechanical issues going on, half of the time it feels like the shield doesn't want to work. Other times the game buffers a second melee hit for me after I only launched one, locking me into a position for longer than intended.

I've bugged this Doom out far more than I've ever experienced in a Doom title before this. That's impressive and speaks to a lack of quality control that I feel is usually present in ID Software games. Apparently it has been lost to time now. I'm not going to finish this.

Doom The Dark Ages indeed. A Dark Age for the Doom franchise to return to. I'll be here when you're ready for another reboot and are ready to put out truly quality work again.

I literally had four crashes in the span of forty minutes: https://youtube.com/live/0dVyLlurNAE

2016 was the truest return to Doom
Eternal was a wacky fast-paced platformer shmup
Dark Ages wants to be Captain America, except his shield isn't working all the time.

I educated myself about this Doom because Eternal was an unpleasant surprise and even knowing how Dark Ages was going to be, I feel let down. So I'll be keeping my eye on the indie scene from now on.

EDIT: I can't even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 100% the game because it consistently crashes upon reaching the first sentinel shrine in Resurrection. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful. Do not buy.

The Precinct feels like a True Crime inspired game in which you run around and take down criminals as a Police Officer. The camera is an isometric-like top-downish view of the world and the 80s vibe is done pretty well here.

As far as the sandbox elements of the game go, it's good. There's various types of patrols you can find yourself on, all of which have a particular focus. Crime is rampant in this game and callouts are frequent. You answer these at your own discretion as some callouts may ask you to move outside of your patrol zone. Some may ask you to go an unreasonably long distance, some may just be too dangerous.

There's a ton of different kinds of crimes that the civilians can and will commit in this game. All the way from littering to flat out murder in broad daylight. The game features drugs and alcohol but doesn't feature anything that could be considered NSFW. There are no streakers or otherwise in this game.

Car controls are very arcadey, they can be a little slippery to control, especially during the rubberbandy chases that you will go through in this city. Civilian vehicles accelerate faster than any of your squad cars, making it difficult to keep up with them when they do certain on-a-dime turns. Friendly cop AI has the same behavior and can be noticeable if you watch the minimap.

Helicopter patrols mostly work as intended, there's only been a couple of instances where a suspect has been in a spot where they can't be captured. The helicopter also controls much like the helicopters in Saint's Row 3 do.

My biggest gripe will have to be the shoot and cover mechanics, they're a bit clunky and often get me hit by a lot of stray bullets. Entering cover is a pain, Cordell sometimes can't even decide if he wants to do it or not. Exiting cover is a pain, every time I want to start a chase I have to remember to press the button to disengage from it. It'd be nice if I could tilt the control stick the opposite direction of cover to get out of it.

Shooting has its own little set of problems but not quite as bad as the cover IMO. To shoot, you first must aim. When you aim, a line with a reticle at the end pops up indicating where you're going to shoot. It's relatively snappy and responsive, however you have to expose yourself to gunfire in order to do it. You'd think just move around in cover so they don't know where you are, but they just track where you move to.

So getting off a decent shot often requires you to take a few shots from the criminals before you can actually take them down. Even popping in and out of cover gives you a good chance of eating a stray bullet.

As for the story? Well. It felt pretty predictable, but I didn't mind. I got this for the sandbox elements anyways. It kind of makes me wish they'll expand it a little with one more island, perhaps to the east or south of the Precinct. The map is a little small, but so is the development team. While I think one more island would do the game wonders, I understand that it'll probably never happen. It's the same with wanting a co-op feature to tag Kelly out.

At the end of the day, it's a nice sandbox title. Things I'd actually like to see added/polished are:
calling ambulances to clean up bodies
cops actually getting back into their cruisers and leaving scenes of crime
fire department support for vehicle fires & maybe add arsonists to the game
interiors like stores, apartments & a bank
chase suspects into subways and catch them down there
a few more lines for Cordell and Kelly to use during the repeated actions and activities they do
vehicle chases shouldn't have their speeds dictated by AI aggression, instead they should obey limitations like players do. cops also rubberband pretty badly, it's got issues.

i could probably go on but i'll just leave it at that for now. I'm happy with what's here and I think it's fun to play. I've done everything you can possibly do in the game.

Cannot in good faith recommend this Monster Hunter right now as the performance issues are outstandingly awful. There's so much wrong with this game, I can't fit it into one review because of the 8,000 character limit.

Throughout the entirety of the Low Rank experience, you're going to basically be railroaded as the story is shoved down your throat. You will not get to SIMPLY experience it with your friends either as it suffers from the EXACT same problem World: Iceborne had, albeit slightly better. Wait for everyone to watch the cutscene of the monster, which again SEAMLESSLY transitions into combat. Only this time, you run out of the arena of the monster (unless you're the designated host), open your invitation list and converge all on one friend. If you don't run out, the monster might INTERRUPT YOUR CONNECTION. IT CAN INTERRUPT YOUR CONNECTION! ...WHAT?! Just let me take the hit/cart and join my friends!

While you're in Low Rank, the weather for every locale is going to be static. In some instances, no monsters will ever spawn and roam the map for you to farm and instead will force you to go on optional quests in case you happen to want their materials. What's more is that if you and your buddies aren't at the exact same point in the story, you can't set up an Environment Link with each other either.

Once I got out of Low Rank and into High Rank, the game actually opened up. I was allowed to run around the various locales with randomized weather, events and monsters as I was sort of hoping to do in Low Rank, minus the extra monsters of course. There are still "Talk to Alma" moments, but there is genuine discovery to be had in High Rank, like the first time me and my friends ran into Rathian in the Scarlet Forest. That was actually cool.

At least until HR40, then I was railroaded into fighting an apex predator and disallowed from experiencing normal gameplay until I defeated the stupid thing. I hate how they rob the player's freedom in this game, it's truly deplorable.

It also wasn't until High Rank that the game introduced something like World's Botany lab or Rise's Argosy. I was really thinking the game was going to make me farm things manually given the new design of almost everything in this game. Layered armor is vastly improved as now all you have to do to get it is make the corresponding armor you want and then set it as layered in your appearance customization.

Won't even be able to fit it in this review when it eventually releases.

Combat in this game has been given a lot of quality of life changes and additions. Hunter animations have all been updated from the previous MH titles and are a little more fluid/cinematic. Monsters behave a little more unpredictably than before, comboing multiple Hunters instead of focusing on one at a time. As for the changes/additions, there are several.

Firstly, you have Focus Mode. This allows you to aim your attacks in exactly the direction you want them to hit mid-swing. This is huge for weapons like Great Sword which often get stuck committed to an attacking direction. Focus Mode also highlights Wounds which is a changed mechanic from Iceborne. Using a Focus Strike on a Wound will cause it to be destroyed and force a flinch/topple.

Secondly, Wounds themselves are created by repeatedly attacking the same spot on a monster repeatedly. No more clawing to a Monster's part and tenderizing it. Wounds don't last a fixed amount of time and are instead destroyed when enough damage is dealt to one. When a Wound is destroyed, that part gains temporary resistance before another Wound can be opened there again.

Third, the Slinger is re-worked. It can be used during some niche weapon combos, it can be used to activate falling debris/environmental traps, it can be used to snipe items from a distance into your pouch and the various ammunition types that can be found and dropped from Monsters are actually useful to use outside of causing a flinch like in Iceborne.

Finally, the Seikret doesn't help you the same way the Palamute does, but can save you in a pinch after you've been knocked down. This is also the first time a Monster Hunter game allows you to switch weapons on the fly, which you can only do on the back of your Seikret. That's right, you bring TWO weapons into your hunts now instead of just one.

We went backwards on the PC menu controls, they felt so good and intuitive in World, but in Wilds (and Rise) I had multiple issues where I had to click things multiple times in menus, get confused, click out of things and get frustrated because they didn't just copy paste and improve upon what they did with World, which allowed the mouse to automatically highlight and adjust things without extra and unnecessary inputs.

There's also this incredibly annoying, supposed-to-be-helpful notification box that appears on the right side of the screen every time a monster enters the locale or some event occurs. Any time it pops up, it lasts a few seconds and tells you useful information. The problem is that you cannot open the map while these notifications are still present, meaning you have to speed up and skip it in order to actually use your map.

Environment Links are both great and stupid at the exact same time. They allow me to form a party with my friends and seamlessly run out into the wilderness in order to hunt monsters, gather materials or just hang out. What's stupid is that as the host of an Environment Link, you cannot simply swap locales. You have to disband and reform the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Environment Link. Couldn't just re-use the Seikret FT animation for everyone, huh?

Also get this, while you're in an Environment Link, you cannot post traditional quests seeing as the game can't preserve it while you're on one. So if you want to do optionals, investigations or even assignments if you still have any, DISBAND THAT LINK. It's a real shame too because Environment Links are where I'm finding the most entertainment value.

I can't set pictures in my Hunter's Field Guide for the various monsters, small monsters and endemic life in this game like I could in Rise. I super loved that from Rise and am disappointed that I can't seem to do it here in Wilds. Furthermore I am disappointed to see the endemic life do not record or mention sizes like they did in Iceborne, only the fish do.

I also can't go into a personalized space, set decorations, furniture and pets or any of that really fun stuff from World: Iceborne. You're telling me I can't show off this cool little Sandstar the way I could show off the Wintermoon Nettle? Come oooon Capcom. We liked these features. Just allow Pop-Up Camps to include pet slots and have them run for the hills if a monster destroys the camp. SIMPLE!

The dithering effect that I disliked seeing in World is greatly, GREATLY exaggerated in this game, like WOW. I compared screenshots between a World sporepuff and a Wilds sporepuff and the difference was staggering. I could pretty much make out every pixel in the Wilds screenshot whereas the World one I had to squint a little for. Water also looks bad.

For everything this game does right, I can find things that they've done either wrong or poorly and that disappoints me more than it really should. What did we even learn from World and Rise for these kinds of issues to be present? I'm still addicted to and playing this game, but will not recommend it as it stands right now. I'm still grinding through High Rank and so will further update this once I've reached a completion point.

Unforgivably precise and floaty. I found myself wanting to close out and uninstall this game more than I wanted to retry the platforming challenges presented here. The lack of an automatic camera that stays behind the play actively hurts this game. Many of the platforming sections will force you to do a MASSIVE walk of shame in order to retry them as shortcuts are few and far between.

So many of the games problems could be solved with more shortcuts or checkpoint lanterns. This also could have used a fast travel and map. It's the year of our lord 2025, what are we even doing? If the final product ends up being like the demo, it's not going to be particularly entertaining to play and will only develop a niche speedrunning scene in which probably like 30 people compete with eachother for the best time.

It's frustrating because the game's atmosphere, the style, the music, the animations, the mechanics and EVERYTHING are so well done that it boggles my mind at how unforgiving the game really is. I dunno, maybe include difficulty options. Easy mode gives you more shortcuts and checkpoints, Hard mode gives you significantly less. Maybe an impossible mode with none at all.

Either way right now I can't recommend it for the casual player. You need to be a platforming master in order to enjoy this game.

EDIT: It's a great game but I still don't recommend it for casuals. It really is a game made for platforming veterans and I sincerely hope the full game won't be as tedious as this demo can be.

Satisfactory is very unsatisfying. The amount of effort you have to go through in order to obtain automated power is extremely grueling. In all of the time I spent in-game, I spent more time playing the stupid packaging minigame than actually having the desire to build and expand a factory. Everything is so unreasonably large, there is no building camera, ore deposits are laughably scarce and the creatures in the game don't even obey physics.

Honestly, just play Factorio. It's actually satisfying unlike this game. I can't even be bothered to give it a more proper review.

Great improvement upon the first game. Everything about Zero Dawn has been tuned and refined to be a much more enjoyable experience than before, with the caveat that there's too many weapons and too much to grind for.

Forbidden West tunes the machine tracking from Zero Dawn to be far less aggressive. Machines definitely still track to your location during attacks, but much less egregiously. Most of the time when you get hit now, it is your fault and you can actually sprint out of the way of attacks now. There are still a couple of bad cases, but much less than in Zero Dawn.

Glinthawks are much less annoying because the Sunwing showed up to the party. Then in the DLC, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Waterwing. The Waterwing is entirely the reason I uninstalled this game. They're a midweight machine with the healthbar of a heavyweight. They're unbelievably obnoxious, constantly give you tinnitus and only are engaged in groups of 3 or 4. I have more fun fighting Bileguts, Slaughterspines, Thunderjaws, Stormbirds, Tremortusks, Fireclaws, Tiderippers, Rockbreakers, Shellsnappers and even Dreadwings than I do Waterwings.

That said, you at least get a weapon wheel with 6 instead of 4 slots this time. So you get a lot more options to toy around with mid-battle. Shredder Gauntlets are weird and I hate trying to catch them, so I don't use them. Boltblasters are slow and unwieldy, but powerful. Warrior Bows are a close-range damage dealer, but I also didn't really use these.

For the Shredder Gauntlet in particular it really didn't help that the "tutorial" mission I happened upon with the boom sisters pit me up against the Shellsnapper whom I had only fought once before. Trying to one-two-three that thing while it's playing a game of Diablos Dig and spamming ice rocks at you doesn't make for a fun tutorial.

They did improve the character-to-character interactions from Zero Dawn, though. Their faces are much more expressive and detailed, there is a lot more animation involved as well. The improvement was enough for me to want to sit through dialogue rather than think it's a drag like Zero Dawn.

Overall, it's pretty solid and worth experiencing.

Pretty solid third person action game, but it comes with its issues. Machines are overly tracking to the point where initiating a dodgeroll during an attack is entirely necessary to avoid being hit, sprinting isn't enough. Glinthawks in particular are terrible in this game, your arrows completely refuse to hit their elemental sacs while they bombard you in swarms and combat versus humans isn't super exciting.

If you can get past stupid ♥♥♥♥ like that, the game is really solid. The story is engaging (although not necessarily at first), the music is pleasant and the visuals are great. I did find a certain Stormbird placement to be pretty rough early on.

The game heavily encourages part breaking and abusing elemental weaknesses. The part breaking in particular is definitely my favorite bit as not only does it detach parts from the machine, those parts turn into loot and can disable attacks entirely. Something I think that Monster Hunter misses the mark on with its own part breaking system.

The climbing and traversal elements are also fun enough to engage with. Places you can climb are often clearly marked either by yellow wood or ledges with white lines. The collectibles are pretty forgettable and only serve as something for a completionist to do. The Hunting Grounds are tough but certainly beatable challenges.

Overall it's worth playing and experiencing.

Sony had this pulled from the storefront so they can sell you a completely unnecessary remaster of an already good-looking and well-made videogame. They're also going to require you to have a PSN account if you have any desire to play. Do not buy. Pirate an old non-remastered copy.

Rise, despite technically being quicker, actually slowed a lot of things down for the hunter. Recovery animations and animation canceling has been significantly downgraded from the iterations in World.

The game also tied a lot of things to the framerate, such as monster attack tracking and weapon charge times. Play at a low framerate and do less damage, but play at a higher framerate and the monsters track you better, to the point where you can't evade some attacks by merely walking (where you normally actually can) Which one do you prefer?

Spiribirds are terrible game design and I deplore them. I hope to never see this return in a monster hunter title.

Wyvern Riding is a greatly overused mechanic and breaks the flow of combat, especially if the rider takes the target monster to another monster in another arena. It's worse than the wallbang in World.

There are less iframes than in World, which already has very little iframes to begin with (4 in rise vs. 7 in world at 30 fps, makes a huge difference), so dodging through attacks doesn't work nearly as often in this iteration, roars are also much harder to time.

Apparently you can be stunned through your Greatsword tackle. Makes the weapon unfun to play through the game with, I've tested this thoroughly and I've never once been stunned through my tackle in World. Only before or after.

Rajang is an actual joke in Rise and is not at all threatening. Iceborne Rajang might have had little openings, but he was still beatable.

They went back to the Village/Hub system which became outdated with World's release. The universal quest board is far superior to the separated boards in Rise.

Small monsters disappear into bushes making certain quests like Popo tongues annoying. At least in World the monsters transitioned to another area.

I could probably list more gripes but that's good enough.

What I actually liked about Rise were Wirebugs, Switch Skills, very open maps, all players can view monster cutscenes at the same time and thus quest together instead of World's completely abysmal handling of it, you have the Palamute and you could take pictures of things to put in your notes. That's about it.

if Rise was handled better, I'd be playing Rise. but I'd rather play World. neither of them are perfect, but World does it better. I'm sure Wilds will have problems as well.