Recent reviews by Brausewind

Never got around to playing the original so I was looking forward to this remake. And while I would say that the solid gameplay and intriguing exploration make me want to play more I sadly can't continue. The Cyberspace levels are making me motion sick, and after the third of these levels actually made me vomit irl I decided to abort the playthrough.

Feels like simplified MHWorld with less variety, awful performance, a bad story you are forced to endure via a lot of cutscenes and it features a character that is SOMEHOW even worse than the MHWorld Handler.

The great combat carries the otherwise mediocre gameplay on its shoulders. Map knowledge and navigation is especially bad and worth pointing out since the "auto move to the monster" your mount does by default boils that entire gameplay niche down to "press mount button, hold sprint button". They might as well just play a cutscene of you riding to the monster and then drop you off into an arena. Endgame monster variety is also non existent, with basically only the title monster and a SINGLE elder dragon (that isnt even new to the series) forming the highest threat tier.

The awful performance is well known, so I wont really elaborate on it. With the exception of sparkly effects the game just looks muddy and blurry thanks to the AI ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I need to enable to run the game at 60fps.

The story is just boring and at times cringe, but its not really the focus of the series so I could let that slide. What I cant let slide is the amount of cutscenes used to force said boring story down our throats. Only exception are the food cutscenes, I love those, although I am very disappointed that there are no iconic Palico chefs like Meowscular Chef and Grandmeowster from World.

And last but not least, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Nata. He is an annoying, whiny little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you are forced to pander to because someone on the writing team really wanted to put their "oh he is so brave" kid OC they wrote in highschool into the game. And you cant even ignore him, he is a focus point for almost the entire story and afterwards he gets placed in front of your tent. I apologize for all the cursing, but I am just so done with this damn kid.

Ignore this game, atleast for now. Maybe my issues will be fixed after they release the inevitable Master Rank expansion, but at this point just make a fresh character in World. It will be more fun and easier on your eyes, ears and brain.

Despite 1.1 fixing (or at least attempting to fix) the things that made me quit playing the release version I still cant recommend the game.

The overall atmosphere is great, the gunplay feels good and its very nostalgic to revisit some of the old classic locations from the previous games. But thats where my list of positive things ends.

Now for all the negative things:

- The AI, both mutant and human, is very bad. Humans usually just advance on their enemies and try to hide their stupidity via grenade spam and super accuracy while the mutants frequently had problems navigating around basic obstacles like barrels.

- Really bad lighting issues. Being in the middle of a dark room and looking out of a window is like looking straight into the sun, which makes a lot of firefights that involve buildings very annoying. And a certain story location that features very clean floor tiles was just straight up eye cancer inducing thanks to the horrendous reflections on said floor tiles. In addition to that I also had some flickering issues around objects, but those were far less common than the flashbang windows.

- The new "A-Life" gave me a lot of audio issues. Almost everytime a group of NPCs or mutants went "online" near me their audio would play as if they were standing right next to me. Be it gunfire, mutant breathing or footsteps, it all sounded like it was 5m away instead of 50m.

- The Main Missions quickly become tedious due to the sheer amount of legwork required to get to the individual objectives. To me it feels like a desperate attempt to justify the massive size of the map.

- Exploration isnt really worth it. Sure, you can find stashes, but said stashes are filled with the same ammo, sausages and energy drinks that you will find on enemies. And while there are some rare exceptions to this most of your exploration will be done to drink in the atmosphere of the locations, which kinda looses its appeal after you have seen your 30th abandoned industrial warehouse.

- About halfway through the story the map will be populated by NPCs with very good armor, which turns them into ridiculous bulletsponges. Fighting them feels even worse than the combat gauntlet you had to go through to get the true ending in SoC. They eat between 5 to 10 headshots at fairly low range from a good assault rifle, and dumping an entire mag into one of them at medium range isnt uncommon.

The well known bugs and performance issues might get fixed in the near future, but even if you ignore those the game itself is just so tedious to play once you hit the 30h mark. Stalker veterans will buy it anyway, but if you are just looking for a good atmospheric shooter check out the Metro series instead.

In my eyes, this is the peak of the entire series. MW2 basically looked at MW1 and thought "Hmmm, I want to be like you, but I also want to be an over the top action blockbuster". And even to this day, that approach works so damn well. The non-stop action setpieces just feel epic, despite the aged graphics. And while I prefer this game over MW1, I will still tell you to play MW1 before you even consider buying this since the stories are directly linked. Without knowing the events of MW1 the motivations of the antagonist will remain completely unexplained. I also couldnt figure out a way to change the language from german to english, but the action on screen will overshadow all the mediocre voice acting in your ears. Oh, and just like MW1, this game is quite short, so maybe dont pay 20 euros for it.

Legendary FPS that doesnt need any introductions. Brilliant game, although I personally prefer MW2 for its over the top campaign setpieces. Only real negative is the length, its just as short as CoD 1, so maybe dont spend 20 euros on this.

Fantastic sequel to the already great CoD 1. Besides improving on all the aspects of the first game, it also introduced regenerating health to the series, which allows the missions to be packed with fast paced back to back action sequences. My only issue with this game is its german version. While I was able to change the language in CoD 1 to english, my quest to do the same with this game failed miserably.

Great FPS that still holds up to this day. You can ofc tell it was released over two decades ago, but its still fun and has some very memorable moments, like the first soviet mission or the infiltration of a german warship with good old Captain Price. I definitely wouldnt recommend buying it without some sort of discount though, because 20 euros for a 5h long, 20 year old game is just too much.

Good game, but this version is outdated. You will very likely want to purchase the "Special Edition" since it's much more stable and runs better.

Just a typical TAB-targeting themepark MMO with a TES skin. Overall pretty mediocre in all regards and offers nothing that other games haven't done better. Also features a predatory MTX store and a basically required subscription on top of it, a downright insulting combination.

Oblivion is in my eyes the worst of the Todd TES games, but still an enjoyable experience if you dont mind installing a couple of balance mods. I especially recommend the "Through the Valleys" modding guide, just follow the instructions step by step and you will end up with a stable and far better balanced game.

But even with that modding guide Oblivions core gameplay remains very bad. The combat is a middleground between Morrowinds stat-heavy rpg approach and Skyrim streamlined action-adventure approach, but the stats are poorly balanced and the melee combat feels floaty and weightless. The dungeons, in which most of the combat takes place, are for the most part bland, uninteresting corridors filled with enemies and loot scaled exactly to your level, which makes exploration feel unrewarding.

And despite that it is still an enjoyable experience thanks to its great quests. While the dungeon diving experience is the worst of the Todd TES games, the quests are by far the best. Doesnt matter if you are following the main quest, working your way through the guilds or just doing independent sidequests, almost all of them are fun and interesting. The Shivering Isles content is especially good and is the highlight of every Oblivion playthrough.