Recent reviews by Grubious

The story in Bloody Ties is paper-thin at best, downright awful at worst. It feels like it was written in a fever dream by someone juggling crack-fueled ideas while getting unsolicited advice from the likes of Bill Cosby. The plot kicks off with a mysterious figure, the "Stranger," contacting Aiden about the sinister plans of the Big Evil Man (BEM)—a generic villain whose actual name, Skullface, sounds like a low-level Fallout enemy. BEM's grand scheme? Contaminate Villedor's water supply with chemicals that essentially function like crack, coercing citizens into joining the Carnage Hall.

Speaking of Carnage Hall, it’s apparently a well-established part of Villedor’s culture, even though no one in the base game so much as whispers its name. It's a Roman-esque arena where people fight for glory or survival—or something; the game never makes it clear. Astrid, the strong and independent woman running the arena, tasks Aiden with some espionage nonsense that feels aimless. The plot meanders through bland betrayals and nonsensical twists, culminating in Aiden killing BEM, who is revealed to be—you guessed it—the Stranger. None of it feels earned or coherent. Other side characters, like Ciro, his dad, and his dead brother, are so irrelevant that they might as well not exist. Oh, and there’s a guy who had his junk bitten off by a zombie. That’s about as memorable as it gets.

If the story wasn’t bad enough, the gameplay doubles down on the misery. Remember those missions in other games where your character gets knocked out, loses all their weapons, and you’re forced into an underpowered survival mode for a brief, tense sequence? Now imagine an entire DLC built around that concept, except it’s neither tense nor engaging—it’s just a grind.

Every activity strips you of your weapons "for safety," which is laughable considering the very first challenge involves fighting zombies. You’re handed a weak weapon and thrown into repetitive time-trial missions. The formula is mind-numbingly simple: go to point A, complete a task, move to point B, repeat. Occasionally, the game spices things up by throwing buffed-up zombies at you while you’re stuck with trash-tier gear. When fighting humans, they at least get proper weapons—none of which you can pick up, of course, because screw you, that’s why.

The much-touted Carnage Hall fails to deliver any sense of excitement or grandeur. Instead of feeling like a neon-lit Roman coliseum of chaos, it’s just a dull slog through monotonous objectives. The DLC’s attempts at spectacle fall flat, leaving players with a glorified series of time trials and little else to show for their efforts.

Bloody Ties is a textbook example of wasted potential. It’s neither fun nor engaging, and the story borders on parody with its nonsensical twists and flat characters. The gameplay is uninspired, relying on frustrating mechanics and repetitive missions that feel more like chores than challenges.

If you’re a die-hard Dying Light 2 fan, you might be tempted to pick this up just for the sake of completion. Don’t. Your time is better spent doing literally anything else.

It's highly addictive

I didn't pick this up for a year until it went on sale recently, before playing I re-played the first game, and after having plenty of experience with both. No spoilers here.

My thoughts : The first and second game are equally fun for the same reasons, however they have their own strengths and weaknesses, the first game is an apocalypse, the city is ending and people are trying to learn how to survive, the second is post apocalyptic, people have survived and the conflict is people orientated, a post apocalyptic game was the only direction this could go, and with that, the tone has to change, its not the end of the world ( Pun intended) that the game isn't as scary or tense as the first, think of TLOU, people understand the virus and its dangerous but the game isn't a horror game since its been years, however if it was the beginning, it would be more of a hell show.

PROS :
- Parkour : The game has made parkour more... advanced and floaty, although this is because the mandatory upgrade at the beginning of the game, however the more airtime grants more time to think and perform actions, making parkour float more freely, however some liked the lack of thinking in the first for the tensity
- Combat : HP bars are a thing in games, and in the first dying light, zombies where brick sponges for the first few hours, making it a nuisance to get through them when you have to, however the first is orientated on running, here the game gives the player the freedom to choose weather to run or fight, and with that, combat has become more in depth, its not the most advanced, although it makes fighting feel more satisfying, limbs explode, heads fly, and bones break, along with being able to run and jump to fight, it lets the player decide how they can take care of enemies, like near the ending I decided to play it safe with an encounter, using the jump kick to take out enemies and throwing knives and others at them, although you could take a more offensive approach and just beat their heads in individually
- World : The world is stupidly well crafted, although there's a lot of points where it guides you to much with yellow paint, every ledge and platform flows into every other one, there's plenty of places and areas to explore, every few feet is an actual building you can explore
- Stability : There is only ONE common glitch I encounter, when you interact with certain items and objects, you jitter, and that is it, and it gets annoying, to my understanding, the first year of this game was full of glitches, and unstable, and the only odd parts I got from that was the game lagging 3 times in my time with it, and a loading screen mid parkour cause the game wasn't loading fast enough for some reason, but other than very short lag spikes in 27~ hours is better than most games I've played.

CONS :
- Story : Story sucks, although better than the first, the PC is... a bit of an idiot, getting punched when opening a door happens like 40 times, you'd think he'd look left and right before walking into a room after the third time
- Activities : There's plenty of places and things to do, although certain things, like windmills, or radio towers (yeah screw Far Cry 3 for that) are... boring at most, its simple jumping puzzles that don't have the flow with the game's natural parkour, and I'm sure there was a lot of copy/paste in them, the main culprits are the facilities, and towers.
- Upgrading : Its... not as good as it could be, and its implementation is really dumb, why does a crafter need zombie flesh to help me upgrade a grenade, or a paraglider. Although the upgrades for paraglider and other main tools is fine, for everything else, weapon upgrades can be upgraded to do like 10% more damage each time, and EVERY throwable, upgrade, health kit, etc can be upgraded, I didn't bother to do so for most things except throwing knives, a select few weapon upgrades, and healing kits, you don't have to upgrade I suppose, but it's annoying.


OVERALL
This is an evolution of the first game, and as evolution can do, it can make pretty dumb decisions, I would definitely recommend this to someone who's open minded about games and their sequels, this is no average game, if DL didn't release, this would be incredible, I understand comparisons to the first are inevitable, however this is not something I'd skip over easily.

if I had to give it a rating, probably around 8.5/10, maybe slightly less, but this is gonna go on my favorites list along with the first.

Bethesda may be evil but damn it if they aren't the Walter White of games, addicting and good at what they do, despite issues in the shipping and production.

is good.

The timeless classic from the 90's, Just as good as the day it came out!
The game itself is fast paced action FPS, while the later doom games stepped up the difficulty by a large amount, on higher settings, this game is, HELL, pun intended,
pick this up before playing DOOM 2, it'll prepare you for that game while also being just as fun!

It may not seem as if I played this game a lot, but I HAVE, its amazing, it reminds of those management simulators from the 90's, the xbox version is where most hours have been, but any version of this is great, I recommend this to anyone who enjoys managing something, and creating that thing you manage!

This game, Its good, LIKE VERY GOOD!
Pros
-do you wanna nuke a planet, or space station? cause thats a pro
-Make bases on any planet(except jool)
-Mod the game!
-Set up a space station
-capture an asteroid
-Use mods to fly a planet
CONS
-a bit low res
-Physics can be a little shakey

I haven't played it for a long time ON STEAM...but when I was younger I loved it...i played it on my xbox until my tv broke...but this game IS amazing!

Very good game! runs good my piece of crap laptop...The game is the new simcity...this game...is amazing...