Recent reviews by Buck

The Legendary Edition has everything you loved about the Series, but with more shiny. My only complaint is the lack of proper multi-display support. All 3 games have a Antialiasing related bug in triple wide configs that causes a "ghosting" effect. Turning AA off solves this, but of course, increases jaggies. Mass Effect 1 worked ~okayish~ in Triple wide and was playable all the way through. But Mass effect 2 has a serious HUD scaling issue. It renders fine, but the HUD is MASSIVELY inflated. This is workable, but sometimes pushes dialog boxes off the screen.
I haven't played Mass effect 3 though yet, but so far it at least looks okay. I'm not hopeful that proper multimonitor support will ever be added, but that doesn't detract from the series overall. It's a minor ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Absolutely faithful to the originals. I dare say, the updated art may be a bit too hygienic. It loses a little something being out of it's original 8-bit glory, but everything you loved about the series is still there.
IMO, play it in legacy mode, and no other.

As with many "Walking Simualtors", Tacoma is a short, but very rich experience. Neither the graphics or the storyline are all that amazing, but what Sets Tacoma part is the way that the Dialog and story plays out. It's linear, but at the same time, not linear.
Each Area you visit you recover data from the crew of their activities and conversations. You can move around and listen to the different conversations and follow the AI representations of the crew to see how they all interact.
The Voice acting is, in my opinion, superb. The characters are very unique, and diverse.
Utimately, in the end, if you are not a fan of this type of game, then you won't like Tacoma either. But that in no way means it is a "bad" game. different strokes for different folks after all.
If you do however, then this game is definitely for you.

As with most "walking simulators", "What Remains of Edith Finch" is a short, but incredibly rich and satisfying experience. Don't expect much action, but expect a TON of character development and exposition.
I came into the game knowing pretty much nothing about it other than it's overwhelmingly positive buzz.
Without giving anything away, I was pleasantly surprised at the numerous imaginative twists and turns presented in each story as you progress through the game. The narratives and music take you on an emotional roller coaster as you meet and learn about each member of the Finch family and their unusual history. I absolutely recommend this to anyone who enjoys interactive stories.

Ignore the dishonest review bombing spammers. Despite what those ignorant lemmings want you to believe the "Creation Club" is NOT a paid mod system.

https://creationclub.bethesda.net/en

"Is Creation Club paid mods?
No. Mods will remain a free and open system where anyone can create and share what they’d like.

Yet despite this incredibly plain language, the ignorant haters have once again come out in droves to spew more false outrage. ANYTHING to be offended, huh Kids?

The simple fact is that Skyrim:SE is everything the original game was but modestly improved for a new generation of PC hardware. If you liked Skyrim before, and you've got the hardware for it, then you'll like Skyrim:SE. And conversely, if you DIDN'T like Skyrim before, well then it's pretty likely that you won't like the SE either. For anyone else, all I can say is buy it and try it, refund within the 2hr/2 week period if you don't like it.

Like most "Walking simualtor" games, "Everbody's Gone To the Rapture" is a relatively short, and interactive light experience. There's NO action, and not many things you can "play" with, but the story itself and characters are both incredibly deep and rich. The world itself looks absolutely stunning, which of course comes at a performance cost. That's OK though, this isn't a fast action shooter, you do't need amazing performance to enjoy the scenery.

Firewatch is a short, but marvelously rich experience. Like "Gone Home", this is a game of exploration and character driven story. It's not for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Welcome to the one that started it all.

Historically speaking, Superhero games have mostly been pretty terrible. As a result I ignored this game for quite awhile. I decided to take a chance when the game was on sale. I liked it so much I pre-Ordered Arkham City the very next day!

Visually Arkham Aslyum still holds up well, and should run well even on hardware which is modest by todays standards.
Basic gameplay holds up okay as well, but definitely pales compared to the massive improvements made in Arkham City. It's primarily for this reason that I strongly recommend that anyone who's new to the Series start here.

As an original fan of the Dungeon Master Series Legend of Grimrock held quite a bit of appeal for me. The game almost perfectly emulates the gameplay of the classic series while bringing the visuals nicely up to date.

GAMEPLAY
Similar to another Classic Series (Elder Scrolls), LoG casts you in the role of Prisoners being exiled for unknown reasons into the catacombs of Mount Grimrock. The focus of the gameplay is on combat and puzzle solving, the latter of which can sometimes be maddeningly frustrating, but very satisfying when you finally work it through.

While you have complete freedom to go anywhere you want within the dungeon movement is grid based and fixed to the cardinal directions, up, down, left, right, and turning. Some people (mostly new school gamers) find this limitation madden and arbitrary, but it plays an important role in gameplay and tactics.


STORY
The story is there, but is very, very light. There are lots of little bits and pieces of info scatterd throughout (esp the story of former dungeon Denzien Toorum). You're ultimately left with more questions than answers, but you don't walk away feeling unsatisfied, and that's what the expanded Story in Grimrock 2 is for as well.

In general if you are fan of or think you will enjoy the old grid based style then you'll like this game. But if you're not, pass

Ryse is beautiful to look at and runs quite well even on modest hardware - so long as you at least meet the min requirements that is. The world itself, and especially the charecter models are just stunningly detailed. The voice acting is excellent, and Facial animations are both extremely realistic, but at the same time fall heavily into the "uncanny valley".

The gameplay on the other hand, leaves me feeling underwhelmed. Combat itself is very interesting, but ultimately feels a bit cheap, and limited. One one hand, there doesn't feel like any real rhyrme or reason to either your, or your enemies actions in combat. I found myself incredibly frustrated at times by enemies just whalloping the crap out of me because I don't feel like i'm getting enough prompting by the game. But at the same time performing "Executions" is extremely satisfying, especially "Double Executions" where you finish off two enemies at once. The combat also focuses heavily on precise timing, but even if your timing is totally off, you can still perform relatively well. This makes the gameplay readily accessible and generally easy to learn, but difficult to master (which is as it should be). Getting those "Legendary" Executions just right is going to boil down to memorizing the different Execution animinations and anticipating which button to hit.

Outside of that, battles consists of annoying sequences of dodging arrows and tossing pilums(which I guess some may find entertaining, but I found annoying). The rest of the time is spend running around what looks like a very expansive game world, but you're really just stuck on rails running from one battle to the next.

The game does NOT provide any ammenties for custom key configurations, and this flat out just sucks. While the game does provide you with a few workable preconfigurations to choose from, the inability to custom configure the keys is a huge hindrance, esp for me personally as I don't use the standard WASD layout for movement (i like using SZXC).

This doens't kill the game for me by any means, and I still highly recommend it, but it does cause me more than a little frustration when i'm literally being forced into using a key config that simply just doesn't feel natural or comfortable for me.