Recent reviews by DRMZZY

I fell in the trap of the "next-gen" on PC like many others, and let me tell you it wasn't worth it at all.

These companies make one step forward and then they procceed to make 10 steps backwards. We were all waiting for the next gen to be released for PC but man oh man they did a terrible job overall and here's why:

I play MyCareer since 2017 and kept it that way since then so if you're focusing on MyCareer as well I'd advise strongly against it and below is why.

The good stuff from next gen:

• More graphics options compared to old gen, improved shaders & overall graphics, increased optimization which means although the game is overall more demaning, it runs smoother and you're no longer forced to play at 60Hz 60 fps (144 hz available with no bugs/glitches)

• More animations, game feels less robotic, less clunkiness when it comes to movement.

•The grind to 99 is only one time, as long as you complete it with one character, all of the rest you make can make it to that level.

And now the bad stuff:

• Braindead Pick n Roll, where the AI teammate constanlty hides behind the opponent making the pick and roll completely useless in most cases. This has been an issue since 2K17 and is still not adressed.

• Incosistent shooting: It's not possible for me to finish an entire season + playoffs & the finals on hall of fame difficulty in 2K23 with 70% on 3PT and 89 3-Ball rating, and now with 94 ball on superstar difficulty i'm missing wide open shots even if the passer has Gold+ Dimer (so far I'm sitting at 55% 3PT-Shooting).

It's simply impossible. I've mastered my jumpshot in 2K23 and was able to be as consistent as possible, in 2K25 though nuh-uh. I've tried low-risk, normal-risk, high-risk on the jumpshot timing, and yet it's still incosistent with all three options. I'm missing wide-open, open and light pressure jumpers with gold dead eye, silver mini-marksman, gold shifty shooter & gold set-shot specialist. This is insane because with less atributes and less badges on 23 I was much more effective than this title.

• Meanwhile the opponent AI on Superstar difficulty can hit Late/Early (it's literally yellow on the shot message, not gray like slightly late/early) and they can hit those even when contested.

• The AI is magically able to create separation and space on almost every jumpshot they can, even though you or your teammates hands are up and contesting it, you get the message of either Open or when the RNG is on your favor for once it says light pressure and it actually misses. But anyone with basic basketball knowledge and knowlwdge of the game itself knows something is wrong with the % this year. Even free-throws this year are very incosistent.

•Jumpshot metter is absolutely awful, all 3 variants & the season unlocks are just too bad, why is the meter disappearing the moment I release the shot? Let me see it all the time like in the old games.

• Teammates can and will take the same shots, although they even do they rythm shooting, they are always misssing even if the tempo or the release is just a tiny bit off, but remember this works only for the friendly AI and not the opponents.

• Teammates will still perform dogwater even from players you expect to put up big numbers (looking at you LeBron & AD, which you went 35% FG in a plethora of matches), meanwhile role players from the oppossing team are straight up cooking you.

• Degradation of the Team Chemistry Score. Okay seriously someone explain this to me, who thought it was a good idea to degrade your team chemistry score to average B+? Like really who thought that no matter what you do, even if you just play normal defense on your matchup, you slowly start to lose Chemistry points, LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL ♥♥♥♥ IS THIS?! I need to do 60/20/20 Matches with 5 Steals and 5 Blocks as a point guard to reach A+ Grade this year, what are you guys smoking at Visual Concepts?! Who thought this was a "good" change? It's absolutely one of the WORST I've ever seen in this franchise.

• VC costs to fully upgrade your character. This year's cost to max your character in combination with the degrading team grade (meaning you get less VC at the end of each match) has solidified that the 2K community is indeed brainrotted, since they can continiue to increase the cost each year and nobody's reacting.

• Takeovers need to be grinded in order to reach their full potential: Takeovers are split into 5 levels, of which any takeover you select starts at lvl.3 and you need to play games and reach said level to make 4, and then the same cycle goes for Lvl4 to Lvl5.

• Takeovers have been more specialized and less all-around. My shot creating takeover which gave me +10 on layups, +10 midrange, +5 3PTs, +10 speed with ball, +10 ball control, +5 on other attributes is gone. Now you're forced to select 1-2 attibutes at max that can go to like either +6 or +8, instead of a flat-out increase depending on your takeover. Huge Downgrade from 2023.

• No more Team-Takeover, idk why they removed it, but another L move as usual for this franchise.

Overall if you're looking for a basketball game expecially for a MyCareer experience I'd stick with 2K23, it's a much more complete and fun experience, this year is ruined and aimed only at multiplayer with it's delay on jumpshots etc.

All these balancing/realism changes to make the game less arcade and more sim, simply made it way less fun than the previous years. Stick to the previous titles, save your wallet.

I beat Malenia 1st try with no guides no tactics walkthrough, just me and my trusty colossal greatsword.

I guess people just need to git gud after all.

Game is infested with EOMM that's literally making you play rigged matches with dogwater teammates and ultra sweatlord basement dwellers for opponents. Hit-registration is heavily favoring low K/D and low W/L players (again thanks to EOMM). Increased amount of hitmarkers on specific gunfights which means you're basically forced to lose. The better you are, the longer it takes to find a match and the higher chances of all of the above things I mentioned to happen.

Everything this franchise could have done wrong they did it with this title. Goofy skins after season 1, too much visual screen shake (fake recoil) for Mouse & Keyboard players, no crossplay de-activation/ opt out, irrelevant rewards / attachments / challenges.

I don't really need to repeat numerous things other people have already stated in their reviews but you get the general idea.

Take it from someone who has spend 800+ hours in this title and has played this franchise since 2007 with CoD 4 for more hours combined, they don't deserve your money, they don't deserve your time .There are other games (yes even shooters) that are worth your time and engagement. Break the CoD addiction and you'll be a happier person guaranteed. CoD is done.

Ever since those infamous patents were leaked from CoD:WW2 this whole franchise is nothing but a joke at this point. You're simply not allowed to have fun. Not a single chance. You perform good in one match, the game is gonna punish you for the following 4-5 matches.

Skill Based Match Making is the reason this game is suffering in multiple levels. If SBMM was really working the way it was supposed to, then explain me why, 90% of the matches I'm playing, my team is full of room-temperature IQ players, and the entirerty of the enemies are players that play like on my level. Why is this happening literally 9/10 matches? Every single time it's the same scenario since the game got released.

Also, if there is a "ranked" playlist called Call of Duty League, why is SBMM present in public matchmaking on random lobbies at all times? Isn't the game supposed to find people that have the closest ping like yours so the game can be a smoother experience? Why is it prioritizing K/D and W/L ratio for matchmaking, instead of ping?

Extra note for SBMM, why are my weapons suddently behaving differently from lobby to lobby? M4A1 needs 4 bullets (deals 28 damage) but sometimes I'm getting 4 hitmarkers and I need a fifth bullet? While in close quarters? What is this Infinity Ward?

For some reason, on this CoD, you cannot disable crossplay. Yes you read that right. You cannot opt out of playing with console players. Now why would you do that you ask? I don't know, maybe because on this CoD, the aim assist controller players have is ABSOLUTELY, and I can't emphasize it enough, way too strong. Like I can't bother calling it aim assist anymore, it's Aimbot. For real it's aimbot. You'll see them having the worst type of movement, and the moment you're slightly next to their crosshair, you're done. They don't even have to ADS, it works even when Hip-Firing. You simply cannot escape it. Press F to respawn, because the way they lock-on into you, with 100% accuracy, there's no way you can win the gunfight, sometimes even if you shoot first.

I get it, controller needs something to help players with the fact that they're using just their thumbs to aim, but I don't want to be a part of this. I don't want to die from someone who can literally play the game with his eyes closed and he'll be able to get kills. It's simply way too strong, and there are plenty of videos exposing this. What I find the most irritating is, why could we turn off crossplay on previous CoDs and now it's not possible? Isn't the game having the most PC players ever on the franchise because of the Steam & Battle.net combo?

Some TL:DR for you:
Pros:
- Good Gunplay
- Good Animations
- Weapon Family Trees for leveling up your weapons
- Many Weapon Camos & Attachments to unlock
- AMD's FSR works pretty well

Cons:
- SBMM
- No Crossplay opt-out choice
- Inconsistent footsteps & audio
- No Stopping Power as a perk
- No Ninja/ Dead Silence as a perk
- Matches feel rigged

*Edit 18/08/2024*

So after many extra hours and upon reaching max level, the more time I spent playing this, the more it reinforced what I and many others have already said before.

To sum it up, I'll explain what happened in a random weekday night that is basically the experience I've had with this game this one year and a half:

Me and one of my friends are playing Prisoner Rescue for a two hour session in the night. First hour goes fine, we're both making good scores and we have a 7 game win-streak, we're seeing some new players and some old, matches play fine with no problem, nothing out of the ordinary happening.

Now the second hour we're playing, we're starting to both see a lot of irregularities with the game. We're getting teammates that are acting like they're playing a shooter game for the first time in their lives, while the enemy team is either a 4 stack, a 5 stack or a full party of 6 going against me and my friend. It's a 2vs6 situation and the moment both me and my teammate go down we know the round is over.

Our weapons suddently have more recoil than usual, hit registration is abusmal but only for me and my friend, enemy weapons get such a fast TTK it feels like a single-frame death, meanwhile our weapons suddenly need more bullets than normal to finish someone. I was using G3A3 and my friend was using SCAR-H, and both our guns took 3 hitmarkers and requiered a 4th shot from a Battle-Rifle at medium range while both of us are using the extended barrels for more range. Also packet loss (white color) and packet burst (orange color) was appearing every few seconds for both of us, but only for the 2nd half of our gaming session. And of course let's not forget, the enemies we're fighting have below 10 ping, meanwhile my friend is at 40 and I'm at 60.

The game's algorithm is literally nerfing you in real time, sacrificing your experience in order to make the opponent's better. It's trying really hard to keep you as close to 1 K/D and 1 W/L as possible, with whatever means it has available. Activision is known to take the fun out of their games the moment you show them you're above average and can actually play good.

People who defend this and act as if me or my friend are the problem, they're the same people getting gaslighted by the same algorithm they protect, because they're so garbage they end up playing on protected brackets of matchmaking in order to spend more money for skins.

If you still think this franchise has a chance for redemption, you are another fool of consumerism and you deserve every ultra-low quality products you're getting from these companies.

All Time Classic. Back when CoD was fun.

Not Recommended

This game is simply not worth the current price tag (45€). Until they implement a party system that allows me to invite my friends so we can all go together in the same server, on the same team, I cannot accept the current price. Even Steam's invite and join game features do NOT work at all.

Weapons have their real-life names and so do the attachments, vehicles, camos and rest of the equipment. One serious problem though, there is no weapon customization, at all. You only have pre-made classes and sets and you cannot change a single thing about them. I understand the average rifleman of any faction won't be able to have a fully modded rifle, but at least allow me to change the optics for it since most engagements are at least 75m+. Also optics have way less zoom than they're supposed to.

If you want to play this with friends and not solo it's gonna be a tough time. To give an example: If let's say, I played 10 matches during the free weekend, 5 out of 10 matches me and my friends (group of 4) were never in the same team and we couldn't switch to play together. Your only chance to play with friends is to find an relatively empty server and wait for it to fill up while you've picked your team.

2 out of 10 matches we actually were able to fully enjoy the proper experience (All of us together, proper squad leader communication and swift execution of the objectives).

Optimization is simply horrible. I could barely stay above 60 frames while close to an objective area. Serious question: When a game developer says they recommend a GTX 1060 for 1080p, do they mean 60 fps or 30 with everything ultra? Because I couldn't stay above 60 with everything low except the textures (high).

TL/DR : Buy this only if you can find it for 15€ or 20€.

One of the best Early-Access games out there. Definitely worthy of your time and current price.

A Childhood favorite. Remastered Graphics, Audio, Models & Textures. The Forgotten Campaigns got heavily reworked & improved from the older release of 2013. Pathfinding is better, but it definitely needs a bit extra work to be perfected.

Achievements got reworked too, no need to get 100 Victories with every different civilization if you're achievement hunting. Frequent Events provide extra content & Challenges, while Multiplayer victories provide you with extra player profile icons.

This is what the older AoE 2 HD (2013) was supposed to be, a true HD experience. I'm using 4K textures pack with an i7 6700 & GTX 1060, while fighting 4v4 on Post-Imperial Age, frames never drop below 60 no matter where I'm looking at or my zoom level.

If you're a fan of the series, want to relieve your childhood in greater visual fidelity, or simply because it's an RTS game, it's worth both your money and your time.

Started as a small Duke in Hellas and ended up ruling the Byzantine Empire for centuries in an unstoppable dynasty.

11/10 Would make Byzantium great again.

Probably the last Assassin's Creed that feels like an Assassin's Creed, taking place in the early 1700's during the Spanish-English war for the conquest of the Caribbean.

This is the story of Edward Kenway, Connor's grandfather and Haytham's father. The events of this game take place before AC3 and AC:Rogue.

Even though this game feels more like a pirate game (which it kinda is for the most part), the elements of gameplay that made these series famous are still here.

Seriously bad: This game has local save only, so make sure if you want to save your progress to find the file location and make your backups.