Recent reviews by Gaming_Thipje

Awesome game to play with friends

This review is mainly meant for those who have played Mafia II before and want to buy the sequel, Mafia III. Please do keep in mind that I did not come from a blank point of view as I loved Mafia II. Thanks.

TL:DR: Do not waste your money on this game, but buy the prequel Mafia II instead since it features a better storyline, more interaction with the open world and much more eye to detail overall.

Ever since Mafia III was announced I was looking forward to play this game. Now, as it is finally release, I have to change my enthousiasm towards this game.

Game World
The game is set in a 1960's American city (I believe it is based on New Orleans), and the player is playing as a black guy named Lincoln Clay. The city looks nice and has a nice variety of areas including high density downtown areas, swamps and even a theme park. Buildings lack detail and it is always clear which building you can enter and which you can not, since the ones you can enter are highly detailed and have higher resolution textures. Most building blocks are just there to fill the map though and there is only limited interaction throughout the game world. If you have played Mafia II in the past, you might know that you could interact with a ton of different people around the city, and people would actually say hi to you when you walked past them. That is no more in Mafia III. The AI feels like blank paper. They won't interact with the player that much and they won't even go out of the way when you are driving over the sidewalks. Roads are wide so you can easily navigate though the city, but sometimes this takes away the sense of driving in a city.

Vehicles
There are only a few different vehicles in the game, and in most cases the biggest difference between a set of cars is the color scheme. You cannot store your cars in a garage, but instead you unlock a feature to call up a certain vehicle. These vehicles are not interchangable and will always stay the same. Car customization is present, but very limited. There is a good variety of speed difference between cars, they don't all handle the same way either. Speaking about handling, I would describe it as somewhere between Watch_Dogs (horrible) and GTA V (pretty nice). There is an option to change the driving mode from arcade to simulation, but it doesn't change the handling of the cars as much as this option used to do in Mafia II. Most details from Mafia II are removed. Tires no longer bulge under the weight of the care while driving and there is almost no smoke generation when performing a burnout. You also cannot clean your car anymore and neither can you fix a stalled or broken engine. Performing a drive-by feels good but could be done better. You can no longer buy gas at a gas station and cars don't run out of fuel anymore.

On Foot
There are next to none invisible walls and Lincoln reacts nice to his surroundings. For example, if you would run up to a wall, he will put his hands against the wall to protect him from injury (same goes for tables and cars). Shooting is okay although it feels less satisfying than in Mafia II, and the selection of guns is very limited. Most guns perform the same way and the only difference is the ammount of ammo they can store. Speaking of which, you can call up a gun trader instead of going into a gun store to buy guns and ammo. You can also upgrade your car here and buy upgrades for Lincoln himself. As said before, you can get a car delivered to you at any given time, even if you already ordered a car three seconds ago. Stores can only be entered to rob them but there is no other use for them. You cannot customize Lincoln, so you will always play with the same (extremely ugly and totally not mafia like) outfit. You cannot interact with mirrors anymore (they are glitched and stretched) and small objects just don't exist. Lincoln will walk right through them as if there was nothing there.

Story and Side Missions
The story is interesting at first, giving you a reason for all the missions in the future. It is nice to see that the developers were not scared to use racism and sexism throughout the game as it was part of the society back then. After a few hours of playtime, the story becomes repetetive and feels a lot like Saints Row. You basically have to take over districts in the city to eventually rule them all. Every mission is the same, you have to kill a certain amount of guys, and you can do it either using stealth or pure action. Stealth seems to be broken as you can clear out an area while standing at one spot, waiting for all the enemies to come looking for you. Most side missions are extremely boring and they all involve the classic story of an open-world side mission: drive there, pick that up, drive back, done.

Conclusion
Do not waste your money on this game, but buy the prequel Mafia II instead since it features a better storyline, more interaction with the open world and much more eye to detail overall.

The game is fun, but offers too little to be a full 20$ game. It feels and plays like a free to play mobile game, in which they have added a boat parking simulator just for the giggles.

If this game was a free game with (maybe) microtransactions as seen in traditional free to play titles, this game might have been worth playing. For now, keep looking for something else or buy this when it is dirt cheap.

Conclusion: Offers to little to be a 20$ game, gameplay feels like a free to play game and is lacking.

I wanted to give this game a positive review so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad. I enjoyed Just Cause 2 both on Playstation 3 and PC, and have over 500 hours total in that game.

When Just Cause 3 got announced, I was instantly hyped for this sequel for the oh so good Just Cause 2. However, the developers seem to think that a GTX 980 is minimum in a low end PC these days, so the framerates on my GTX 960 (the 2 GB edition by MSI) just cannot push this game beyond 40 frames per second. That is, if you forget about all the lag spikes that happen every 1 to 2 seconds.

The game itself is pretty well made. The wingsuit is a nice addition to move around the world quickly, and it works flawless in combination with the grappling hook. Speaking of the grappling hook, this thing has been completely redesigned. The keys to use it are no longer on the keyboard but mapped on you mouse so you can always use it quickly in any situation. You can now apply strength to the rope to pull stuff apart or to help you blow stuff up to gain more chaos points.

Chaos points don't seem to do anything anymore. They are just there because they were there in the previous games as well and it is probably still there for the sake of being. In Just Cause 2 you had to collect chaos points in order to progress in the game, however in Just Cause 3 that is no longer the case. New story missions unlock as soon as you have completed the previous ones, and most of the time you have done the stuff you have to in such mission before you start it, which doesn't add to the fun.

The game is gorgious and sure runs fine on a system using a high end quad/six core processor combined with 16 gigabytes of RAM and a GTX 980 or equivalent, but it seems that Avalanche Studios have forgotten about their 'cheapskate' community. For those that cannot afford a high end gaming system, pass on this game. The game runs horrible and there is little to no optimalisation, something we have seen different in Just Cause 2. That game runs on ultra on a potato, for that matter.

Rico has grown older and so have his powers. He is now capable of using multiple thethers at once, and can survive nearly every explosion if they are further than 3 feet (1 meter) away from him. This only adds to the fun. You truly feel like you are playing as some kind of reborn rebel that can save the world like any superhero can. Your arsenal has been expanded with some new interesting weapons (You can now fire mini nukes, ♥♥♥♥ yes!).

I do recommend this game to those who own a high end system, however, everything below a GTX 970 or R9 390 combined with a mid range processor will not pull this game at 60 at any settings. I have played this on my i5 4460, 8GB RAM, GTX 960 system and it doesn't matter which settings I use, I never reach a stable 60 frames per second and I have always suffered from major lag spikes. Adding to this that the last update, which had to fix some performance issues, only made the game run worse, this game is a total flop.

Man I had hoped this to be so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good.

[EDIT #1 May 19. 2016] I am changing this review to positive. Most gamebreaking bugs have been solved and the memory leak issue has been fixed. My relatively low-spec system can now run this game at 60 frames per second all the time on medium. It is still not as good as Just Cause 2, both story and gameplay wise, but it is now an enjoyable game.

This game is open world gaming at its best.

I have spend over 200 hours playing this game on PC and over 250 hours on the Playstation 3. The game is extremely beautiful for the time of release. Even when playing this game today I don't have the feeling that I am playing an old/ugly game.

The Pro's:

The world is build up pretty nicely. There are different regions with different types of vehicles and camouflages. When you are in the desert your clothing actually collect sand and up in the mountains you get white of the snow.

Grappling around the world feels nice and fast, and switching between freefalling, tethering and the parachute feels fast and action-movie like.

The vertical freedom in this game is absolutely insane. Flying high above the ground and freefalling for over 10 minutes is just part of the game and causes no issues with the game at all.

Exploding stuff feels satisfying, however not everything that you might want to destroy, can be destroyed.

The police is actually smart. They will follow you everywhere, even if you take your vehicle offroad. Helicopters and planes try and will kill you, and taking them over makes you stronger, yet still you can be taken down by the soldiers on the ground.

The Con's:

Some places on the map show a lot more glitches compared to others, mainly when tethering with your grappling hook.

Cars don't handle that well compared to other popular open world games, some feel like boats, others like tuned motorbikes.

The story is short and doesn't really catch you in any way. You just play through it because it gives you another oppertunity to blow stuff up, but that's really it.

You cannot complete this game 100%. Due to a last minute change in the map, about .7% of the games collectibles got lost.

Summary:

You should totally buy this game. It is cheap, fun and addictive for at least a few months. Even if the singleplayer gets boring you can always install the multiplayer mod and play with hundreds of other Just Cause 2 fans. Even though the game cannot be completed for 100% and the story lacks content, this game features a very beautiful and big map, in which you can explode almost anything you can think of (yes, even trees). There is a wide arsenal of vehicles and weapons to choose from and navigating through the map feels not slow at all (walking from one side to another will take you about 3 to 4 hours though).

9.5/10

So I loaded up a new game and spawned inside a small 'Escape Pod' spacecraft. I knew that it would become a long trip since I played around with planets before, but I set course to the moon. After roughly 45 minutes, having traveled at 104 m/s, I arrived at the surface of the moon, where I detected a major problem. The Escape Pod didn't have enough trusters to slow me down enough to come to a complete stop before crashing into the middle of a giant crater on the moon. I climbed out of the heavily damaged vehicle, and set course to the edge of the massive pit. I looked up and saw the earth, it seemed like a place where I could live happily forever, and soon I got the idea to use my jetpack to boost me out of the gravityfield of the moon. In space, traveling at 115 m/s, I had a great view over the horizon of the moon, and when I turned around, I could see the sunset on earth. 30 minutes on and I reached the gravityfield of the earth. I fell faster and faster down towards the ground. I saw snow on the mountains, and lakes in the sun. I reached 145 m/s when I activated my jetpack again, I only had 50% of fuel left and had to be careful not to wast it. The trees loaded in and that was the point where I started boosting in the opposite direction, breaking me enough to stop my falling speed. I landed safely on the surface of the earth, where I could finally start building my base and live happily ever after.

Best 'giving-you-a-satisfied-fieling' and space game - 9.5/10

Play this if you want your PC to commit suicide.

One of the best racing experiences I've ever had using a controller.

Dynamite Jack, what can I say. It's amazing for it's price, but it just doesn't have the features to be the best.

THE GOOD:

+ Great graphics for a top-down puzzel game (shadows and sorts too).
+ Difficulty is nicely build up from easy levels at the beginning to challenging levels at the end.
+ Aggressive AI.
+ No game-breaking bugs (surprising for the price).

THE BAD:

- Not alot of variety in levels.
- Controls are poorly mapped.
- No story line.

Dynamite Jack gives you alot of bang for your buck. Packed up with some nice features and puzzel elements, this game can get real intense when playing. Especially the later levels are filled with hostile AI and difficult maps. The game features a small but clear user interface. There is no irrelevant information shown other than a somewhat annoying tutorial at the beginning of each level. For the €8.99 price tag you get enough levels to play through and the game is surprisingly free of bugs.

However, as soon as you boot the game, pay attention, an automatic cutscene/loading screen will pop-up showing the only bits of story line you will see throughout the whole game. Also, after a long gaming session some levels might feel familiar to previous levels, only to be stacked up with AI and extra objectives to complete.

One last big complaint towards the game is about the controls. They are so poorly mapped even ArmA III has better default controls. Z for your flashlight (yup, that's right), and control your character with the all familiar Unity control system: ↑ ↓ ← →.

Should I get this game for the full price?
- Yes.
Should I get this game when it's on sale?
- YES YES YES.

By buying this DLC you pay for cheats you can access without having this DLC, ♥♥♥♥♥ THQ?