Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον Fat Sacks

New age Thief- a modern classic. In my opinion there are few games from the last 10 years that have earned the same status that this game has. Gameplay is very thoughtfully designed, both the levels and mechanics are meticulously designed with a lot of different interactions and outcomes from different objectsand tools. Everything has a use and if you use your brain you can pull off some crazy moves. My new favorite thing to do is to freeze time, set a mine on a rat then use the pull ability in the DLC and pull the rat into my hands and chuck it at the closest group of enemies. Fighting feels very satisfying especially with powers and doing things like chucking items at enemies to stagger them, you can jump on enemies heads to throw them off balance and deliver an easy kill. Sneaking as a whole is very fun, again you have to use your brain to figure out the best ways to go to avoid traps or enemy patrols. The game is an immersive sim through and through and I think it leverages its systems very well. It shares a lot of DNA with Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic (if you like the Dishonored games but never played this game jump on that ASAP) and that's a great because there aren't enough games out there like this.

Story wise it's not anything mind bending, but it doesn't try to be very intrusive. You can pick up a lot of lore from the world at your own pace and a lot of time that lore will help you get extra loot and it helps that a lot of time it's pretty interesting. The setting and art are distinct, the world looks like a stylized painting with elements pulled from Half Life 2's City 17. I think it has held up extremely well over the last 10 years and I don't think it will ever look bad because the art style is so well designed. The music is very minimal but fits the setting well. Sound effects for the most part are orchestral music stings that do a great job in communicating what is going on. The game sounds very clean with really the only negative thing being a lack of voice actors and voice lines for guards, but they still do a good job with specific dialogue designed to give you more insight to the story/lore and the mission objective.

As a whole, I think everyone with a passing interest in first person slashers, stealth games or immersive sims should buy this game and the DLCs. When this game first came out I was floored by how good it was and I think it still holds up today thanks again to the beautiful art, competent story, lore and writing, smooth gameplay with unique mechanics and great sound design. The game runs beautifully on modern systems with the only blemish being that there's no AA options outside FXAA, but you can force the game to run with MSAA through Nvidia Inspector. I've beaten this game as many times as New Vegas, Witcher 3 and Skyrim, so again it's a modern classic as far as I'm concerned. For me it's one of those games that kind of ruins your tolerance for middling games and makes you wonder how the hell more people aren't talking about it.

Games with third party launchers shouldn't be allowed on Steam.

I'm really into this game. The weapons feel great to aim and shoot, animations are pretty good and the core objectives are pretty simple without feeling too uncomplicated. This game is basically everything I wanted Verdun to be. I really really really don't want this game to die. Like I mentioned, the gameplay is great but the game seriously needs more players and they certainly deserve it more than hll for sounds and weapon handling alone.

There are some big caveats with this game however. Performance isn't great and the game doesn't look great. I play at 1440p with settings on a mix of high and ultra and framerates with a 3080 and an overclocked 9900k have you hovering anywhere from 70 to 100 fps with rare drops to the 50s. AA needs to be overhauled, there's a lot of transparent objects on the maps (like barbed wire and thin tree branches) so MSAA won't help (not that it can since it's disabled atm), TAA works but it makes everything a smeary mess, other AA implementations are either broken or aren't tuned well because there's still a lot of jagged shimmering edges. I've been running the game with 150% scaling and it's a lot more clear but this obviously has performance sacrifices even with my rig.

At the end of the day I think this game really needs a free to play weekend so servers can be filled up and more people get their hands on it and try it, I imagine a lot of Verdun players would love this game if they tried it out. There are bugs with the game, but I think it's all going to be addressed eventually as long as this game has some kind of population.

Max Payne 3 is good, great even, but I don't think the game reaches the same heights as Max Payne 2. Let's get all the negatives out of the way first.

While the world certainly has much more detail than Max Payne 2, it is VERY linear. A majority of the missions revolve around killing people in corridors. The characters that I praised in the first 2 games aren't here, thugs you encounter don't have conversations like they did in the other 2 games, and before you say "they do that in Brazilian", the game never stops reminding you that Max doesn't speak Portugese. As someone who also obviously doesn't speak Portugese I can certainly relate, which I guess can help with immersing the player, but the game loses so much of its charm because of this one decision alone. You also lose all the interactivity found in previous games. You don't find painkillers in cabinets you need to open first or stashed on top some boxes high up that you need to shoot to get them down. Max doesn't really interact with anything but like a dozen buttons and some "clues" for the entire story. There are TVs in this game like there were previously, but they're all kinda hidden away and you're never presented with a choice to go back a single room. The game lacks levity, it's just dark themes one after the next, Max is less sarcastic and talks more like a character out of Kane and Lynch or Rogue Warrior. The story is pretty good, but again without the levity it's just darker and darker themes over and over until the end where Max just walks into the sunset. I think they could have pulled something like Spec Ops: The Line, but instead it feels like they retconned a lot of what happened in Max Payne 2 to tell a very strict and linear Rockstar-flavored story. There are also tons of contrivances with the writing and if you're paying any attention to the story, you'll probably be able to call the "twist" a few missions in.

With all that out of the way, it's time to get on with the positives. The gameplay is BUTTERY with a mouse and keyboard. Everything is systems driven and relies heavily on accuracy. The first games always had some degree of inaccuracy, but it fit the first game very well. The second game improved on accuracy by letting Max headshot enemies and this installment triples down on the fact. All guns are extremely lethal with great accuracy letting the player get into some crazy moments. It's extremely fun to dive around the corner and nail 6 dudes in the head with a 9mm. The euphoria system employed in this game is awesome, even if enemies are in cover you can likely destroy it and shoot them in some limb resulting them in falling over and clutching the wound, allowing you to pull off a slick headshot. The euphoria system also applies to the player and lets you do dumb stuff like sliding down an escalator while shooting 2 full auto glocks. It's all extremely satisfying and I'm definitely going to be replaying this game on higher difficulties and with mods later on down the line. I like the music a lot too. It's very unique and fits the game really well.

So closing thoughts, the game is amazing from the gameplay perspective with a keyboard and mouse. The aiming is smooth, the shooting is impactful and bullet time ties it all together so you feel like John Wick pulling it off. The graphics are very well aged for a 10 year old game and while the world doesn't have the interactivity or the freedom of its older siblings I still think this game is a ton of fun. I had 0 technical issues running this game on the same system I played Max Payne 1 and 2 on, and just like those two games I think everyone with a passing interest in this game should play it.

A true evolution of the formula first introduced in Max Payne. Everything great about the first game is back and has been tuned up to feel even better in gameplay. The world is once again beautifully set up with a ton of detail both in graphics and interactivity, this time however, the game now has a physics engine. Remedy did an absolutely amazing job of integrating physics into a game where everything used to be based on key-framed animations. There are plenty of puzzles that use physics to a small degree and it adds a lot, characters collapse into ragdolls upon death and your bullets actually have a physical effect on them.

A decent amount of characters return for this installment's story. Speaking of which the story in this game is just as good as the first. Max's decisions in the story all have their consequences and you can see and feel those decisions happen in gameplay. Just like Max Payne 1 there's a lot of mature themes and fleshed out characters so if you're looking for more of that in the sequel, you'll find it here in spades. I recommend this game to everyone and once again believe it deserves the title of masterpiece during the 2000's formative years in gaming.

With the last game you needed to run a few tweaks before the game can run optimally on a modern system and that is also true with this game. Again it's not a big deal to install and takes less than 10 minutes. I had an issue where my game would constantly be running at over 800 fps but I managed to fix it by editing a single value in the config file for the widescreen patch.

A masterpiece during games' formative years. Max Payne deserves to stand on the podium with games like Halo CE, GTA 3, MGS 2, Deus Ex, Thief 2, etc. It was one of the first pioneers of the third person shooter and it holds up incredibly well to this day. The gameplay is arcadey, but still incredibly immersive. Movement and aiming are smooth as butter once you get the fixes for the game. Graphics at the time were incredibly well realized and it all culminates in a beautifully interactive game world with some great characters and moments. The story, while a little cheesy in its aged state is still very well written with fleshed out characters and its mature themes.

Overall the game is great, but again you need to patch it in order to get it running on modern systems. It's not too big of an effort to do and I highly recommend this game to anyone even remotely interested in it, especially now with the remakes announced.

Networking is a little buggy if you're playing against someone with high ping but otherwise it's a cool fun little uni project.

The majority of this review will focus on the story / singleplayer / campaign, but if you wanna hear my thoughts on multiplayer here you go: I played the multiplayer for around 5 hours, and I wouldn't recommend it. The weapon sandbox is a straight up downgrade from previous Halo games, where some weapons are literally never worth taking over others. The customization is laughably bad and restricted to an annoying degree just so Microsoft can squeeze a few extra dollars out of the new players. The whole monetization aspect of this game sucks and is intrusive enough for me to just avoid the online. The game is also lacking coop, custom games, forge and even modes like zombies. As a Halo multiplayer game, it sucks.

Now as for the story, I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing you notice when you launch the game is that a lot of the Bungie Halo art style has been resurrected. Chief's armor looks very similar to Halo 2 and 3, the Forruner structures use similar architecture to the older Halo games and most of the weapons don't look too out of place. Enemies have been changed a bit; brute chieftans, hunters and grunts have seen a fresh coat of paint, while all the other enemies basically look like Halo Reach enemies with higher res textures. It's an extremely welcome change because Halo 4 and 5 are legitimately the grossest, unoriginal looking sci fi shooters out there.

Gameplay is solid. This is probably the best feeling Halo since Reach. Enemies have way more range than earlier Halo games and there are way more enemies out on the field to fight. The grapple hook is the best twist the Halo formula has had since Halo 3 and deployable equipment. Vehicles are the only place where the game feels like it's lacking. Because of the number of enemies you're basically a sitting duck in anything slower than a Mongoose. Marines don't really feel like jumping into the same vehicles as Chief and I honestly wouldn't mind it if their AI wasn't so stupid. The only new thing the marines can do is pick up nicer guns off the ground without the player doing anything which is nice, but other than that their AI is worse than CE. Friendly NPCs regularly jump under vehicles and really the only useful thing they do is act like meat shields. To me, the open world seems like it's only there for combat padding. If you go just from mission to mission you don't really interact much with the open world besides just traveling places. The guns and vehicles you unlock in the open world portion don't really come into play into the story, and that's probably the worst part about this game.

Story is very evidently written by 343. I assume after Halo 5 they realized that they're not really writing stories for Halo games anymore, so for this one they tried to pull as much from Halo CE as they could. You can almost smell the resentment the writers had for 4 and 5 because they really try to retcon everything that happened in those games. As far as games in general go, it's passable as long as you're not paying attention to what is being said or if you don't think about how any of this stuff connects with the bigger lore of the Halo series. The writing for enemy chatter is also just bad. Enemies refer to each other as grunts/brutes/whatever, but it's like why? Half the characters call master chief MASTER CHIEF and it literally doesn't make sense to me why ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blip bap the grunt would be saying master chief instead of demon or whatever. Idk maybe it's just nitpickling but I found 90% of the dialogue in this game annoying.

Graphics and performance wise this game is pretty good. I originally started playing the game with a 2080ti, and finished it with a 3080. The game runs smooth and looks good. The art style being more familiar and cohesive really helps out imo. If I were to complain about graphics it would probably be regarding the fact that there's no real variety in environments. There's valleys and cliffs, but besides that the game just looks like Halo CE when you first get out of the escape pod.

Music is a big thing for me with Halo games, and while this is an improvement over 4 and 5, it's still not good overall. Like don't get me wrong I love all the piano stings and melodies from the older Halo games, but it's not new and not even kinda reimagined like it was in Halo 3. The original music by comparison is generic, it sounds like filler to pad out all the older melodies. I really want them to hire Marty to write music for the next game, but I don't know how realistic that is considering the controversy of him releasing music that wasn't his to release.

So final thoughts, the singleplayer is good. It's not amazing and has a lot of issues like not being able to replay missions, bad writing/dialogue, useless friendly AI, etc, but I am overlooking all of these issues because the gameplay is mostly fun. 343 has the opportunity to make some really good games after this and I'm excited for the future. Hopefully they can apply the lessons they've learned from this game into the inevitable sequel (sequelS, knowing M$ and 343). Some stuff I'd love to see in a future game is a better multiplayer (honestly drop the free to play bs and make a good high quality multiplayer like Bungie did), hire Marty to do the music for the sequels, put a bit more focus in the open world, coop on release ffs (add splitscreen too, and put it on PC too you cowards).

A gorgeous world incredibly detailed and realistically realized, wasted on a Rockstar game. The open world, side quests, sandbox and everything outside the story are incredible. The gameplay is just survival-y enough to scratch that camping video game itch you get from something like DayZ or Death Stranding. Hunting is fun, fishing is fun. Exploring the wilderness is super fun and satisfying. All of this with an incredibly beautiful art style, it's just stylized enough to have a unique art style while also looking incredibly realistic. Few games are able to achieve such a look (Mass Effect, Witcher 3, Skyrim, most of the Metal Gear Solid games and Halo Reach come to mind when thinking of this stylized realism art style).

And then there's the story. The same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ structure Rockstar has been doing since GTA 3. Go to point A, shoot 30 people, watch a cut scene, go to point B, kill 20 people and then watch a cut scene before the mission ends. It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying. If the world and general mechanics of this game were attached to a game like Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come: Deliverance, it would be insane. Instead we are forced through an incredibly scripted carnival ride with a plethora of cliches and movie tropes. This game just doesn't utilize player creativity to do anything for the story, unlike the open world side quests which usually play out with more dynamic choices.

So final thoughts, do I recommend this game? Yeah, but not for $60. Like I said the open world is amazing and super fun to explore and develop your character in, but the story is another boring Rockstar game. I don't understand the people that call this game a story master piece, because even outside the mission game play, the story is not all that well written. It's long, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Anyway, the sandbox and the graphics are absolutely worth like $35. Honestly Rockstar doesn't deserve any money for how they've been handling online and the launcher, but since I haven't been playing online it hasn't been on my mind that much.

Super under rated game. Gameplay feels like mix between CS, Siege and competitive Insurgency Sandstorm. Weapons are very fun to shoot and reload since the game features a lot of the same weapon handling mechanics as Insurgency Sandstorm. Movement is a little funky but nothing dealbreaking in my experience. I like the concept of randomly generated maps because it in part keeps the game fresh and more importantly rewards thinking outside of the box. The art style is incredibly unique and I love it. Music is also great. Honestly the only bad thing about the game is that not enough people play it. Bottom line, I think the game is great, but not worth the $25 asking price so long as the player base is this low. I really hope they have more sales or drop the game price to somewhere around $20 so more people play it.