Recent reviews by dave

Story: 8/10
Characters: 7/10
Side Activities: 7.5/10
Graphics: 6.5/10
Setting: 7/10
Polish: 7/10
Level Design: 7.5/10

Overall 7.5/10
This game is not that much like GTA, despite what people will tell you. It is a game where you play as the leader of a gang called the Third Street Saints, and you do all kinds of crazy stuff involving blowing people up, blowing up huge aircraft, going to mars and driving a car with a tiger in the passenger seat. Side activities are all super wacky aswell, and upgrades and perks unlocked are really cool too. This game is based around mindless fun and I really enjoyed playing it, but there is little substance to most of the activities you do, so you have to understand that you aren't playing this game to get too invested in characters or sub-plots. However the main story is still quite interesting and there is quite a lot going on there, I also found that it didn't go on for way too long like GTA games, and it ended just before I got too bored of it, so I can still explore the rest of Steelport before I move on. I would definitely say this game is great for some casual fun and satisfying combat, and it has aged much better than a lot of titles that have come out since.

Story: 8/10
Characters: 8.5/10
Side Activities: 1/10
Graphics: 7.5/10
Setting: 9/10
Polish: 9.5/10
Level Design: 8.5/10

Overall 8/10
I don't think I have the intelligence to correctly describe how good this game is. Normally I hate FPS games but this really turned my head and was a worthwhile experience. Wolfenstein: The New Order is a game set in 1960, except the Nazis won the war in 1946 and have taken over the whole world with mysterious technology. The story is second to none and is told with super slick cutscenes, incredibly interesting characters and a wide variety of environments. There is a choice you make in the first few hours which affects the whole rest of the game and it plays out with different characters dependsing on what you pick, which I thought was a cool mechanic. The voice acting is also top notch. The art team for this game captured the brutalism design movement that the Nazis used in their architecture perfectly. In between shooting Nazis all around the world (and other celestial bodies), there is a safehouse to explore with cool conversations and minigames. Once I went to sleep in-game and wose up in the safehouse with a side character talking to me about sleeping and consciousness, and I genuinely exited the game after the conversation and thought about what she said for a few minutes. It was something about when you go to sleep, your consciousness dies, and essentially you die, because you are your consciousness, and when you wake up you are a new person, only with the same brain and memories as before. Anyway the graphics are good, the shooting is incredibly satisfying and heavy, the stealth is reasonably limited but fun, the puzzle solving doesn't get in the way much and isn't too bad. No side missions at all really, and for a triple A game you might be expecting more than about 10-12 hours of gameplay, but on sale its definitely worth a go if you feel like killing some Nazis and exploding robots taller than Big Ben.

Story: 4/10
Characters: 6/10
Side Activities: 6.5/10
Graphics: 9/10
Setting: 6.5/10
Polish: 9/10
Level Design: 5.5/10

Overall 7/10
To describe this game, think of the longest, most interesting side mission you ever played. That's this game's main story in a nutshell. A few cutscenes here and there, some minor plot developments, but nothing major at all. In Mad Max, you have a car, and you upgrade it. That's all you really do. Sure, you meet some cool characters and bring broken down strongholds to their former glory along the way, but the only real goal of this game is to make as powerful a car as possible. Max is a man in the wasteland who is the owner of a pretty cool car, but then it gets taken by a man named Scrotus, son of Immortan Joe (main villain from fury road). Mad nearly kills Scrotus and runs into the wasteland where he meets my favourite character, Chumbucket, who along with Max builds the fastest and most dangerous car around. As far as I'm concerned thats where the real story ends, as the rest is basically fetch quests and contracts for another 15 hours. Where the story lacks however, the combat makes up for it, with both Max and the car. taking out convoys in the car feels great with a wide variety of methods for taking other vehichles down, and it never seems to get old. The hand to hand combat is also really good, using a Batman Arkham approach with melee and the occaisional firing of a shotgun. The combat feels heavy for both, like Max is really doing some heavy damage with each shunt or punch. The problem with this is that it seems the combat is all this game has, with no other purpose other than "go over there and punch those people" and "take out those vehicles over there". It does get boring after a while and once you've looted enough scrap to get your car a couple of upgrades it doesn't seem worth it grinding 30 minutes to get -10% Harpoon reload time. The graphics are really nice, and I don't think theres a better looking desert in videogame history, even though it means there is little variety in terrain. Oh and it runs crazily well on any pc for some reason. Overall a really overlooked game and definitely worth a go on sale, especially if you like survival, post apocalypse, car combat or all three.

Story: 6/10
Characters: 6/10
Side Activities: 6.5/10
Graphics: 9.5/10
Setting: 8.5/10
Polish: 5/10
Level Design: 7/10

Overall 8/10
Since this game's release there have been endless complaints about bugs, glitches and poor optimisation. However I can confidently say that in 2018, most things have been fixed. There are still occaisional npcs in crowds that levitate or walk through solid objects, and of course there is clipping everywhere, but I would still say it runs smoothly, and nothing has happened during my playthrough that has totally ruined immersion. It has crashed on me 2-3 times in my ~40hours played so far. As for the game itself, it is one of the stronger Assassin's Creed titles. The main story is fairly interesting with plenty of real historical characters that tie into the French revolution, and there are few missions that feel like it is not advancing Arno to his main goal. Arno is actually a pretty decent assassin's creed protagonist, and could be described as similar to Ezio, but with less wit and charm. He is definitely suited to the time period, and he even comes with a love interest, which brings some fun plot twists and developments throughout the game. As far as characters are concerned, I don't think there have been better since Ezio, as in Black Flag it was more about the gameplay, and don't even get me started on AC3. There are some decent side missions in Unity, especially the Murder Mysteries, but there are about 6 billion collecables and if you do one of each type of side mission, you've basically done all of them. Despite this, one redeeming factor to consider is that they released a free DLC, (which I have no doubt would be a paid one if the game wasn't broken on release) called Dead Kings. This provides another 5 hours of story in a new location, with new side missions, collectibles, enemies and even a new weapon, the Guillotine gun, which is an axe with a cannon at on end. The graphics are amazing in this game, it's 4 years old and still looks like it came out last week. However, the fluidity of parkour and assassinations sometimes reveal the thick web of bugs and clips that ruin the immersion of the game at times. The character customisation in this is great, there are 5 or 6 weapon types, all with about 20 weapons in each, that have different ratings and can be unlocked with money or missions. Same with outfits and equipment, a really impressive system with classes and stats, sure to keep the player doing missions to increase stats and get the Legendary gear. There are many more good things to write about this game, the Cafe Theatre, the improved parkour, but this review would go on for a while longer. I feel that as an Assassin's Creed game, (not a pirate game) it is probably the best since Brotherhood, and although it has many flaws, it is definitely worth experiencing. On sale.

Story: 6.5/10
Characters: 6.5/10
Side Activities: 3/10
Graphics: 4/10
Setting: 5/10
Polish: 7/10
Level Design: 5/10

Overall 6.5/10
An older game at this point, but there is still a lot of fun to be had. I'm playing this game right now because of how much fun I had with Arkham Knight, so I decided to play every game in the series. The story is about the Joker taking over Arkham's mental asylum and releasing a toxin which makes people turn into Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson temporarily. Pretty standard stuff, but there is a cool twist at the end and the whole way through batman has to face a variety of Gotham's famous villains. The game is comedic at times but can also be quite creepy, but neither are forced too much, creating a good blend. However, as previously mentioned the game is quite old at this point and most of the features of this game have been improved on since, such as graphics and combat flow, so my reccomendation is to play this game before any of the others so you don't feel a drop in quality. The graphics are fine, but dont expect to be wowed at any point. One real strong point is the Boss fights that occur over the course of the story, as they require Batman to use his many abilities and powers to defeat the enemy. Not as much interesting detective work going on in this game though. Mostly fingerprint scanning and the occaisional hidden vent etc. As far as side missions go, there are none, but there are a bunch of boring riddles scattered accross the island if you care about that. There are some interesting battles and extras on the menu however, so it's not all over when the game is over. In conclusion, a pretty fun game, worth it for an interesting story, satisfying combat, and it creates a foundation for more Batman stuff to be build upon

Story: 8.5/10
Characters: 8/10
Side Activities: 10/10
Graphics: 9.5/10
Setting: 7.5/10
Polish: 7/10
Level Design: 7.5/10

Overall 9/10
This did for Batman games more than the Dark Knight movies did for Batman overall. The story was great, lots of easter eggs and anything involving the Joker was awesome. All pshycedelic/horror scenes were really well made and enjoyable, although standard jumpscare procedures are in full effect, which despite catching the player off-guard in a few occaisions, it is still a lazy tactic to use. Every character was super interesting, even side characters such as joker-infected Johnny Charisma, and seeing how the Joker infected Batman's mind was well depicted. Despite this, I would like to see some of the classic villains more fleshed out; Two-face and Penguin got mere seconds of screen time. The way side missions were handled was really good, there is a selection of bosses and questlines to complete, each ending with locking up another villain in jail. It was nice to walk past the police station prisons as I progressed and watch the cells slowly fill up. This is one of the very few games where I wanted to complete everything, so I did all side missions and DLC missions, the side activities are just that good. The graphics are incredible, and the artstyle really suits the setting of the game. There were a few glitches along the way, but at this point the performance has been fixed and is running well. One of the main problems I have with this game is that there are Riddles all across the map, and you can't fully complete the game until you solve ALL 243 riddles. This makes it so that only the truly dedicated can see the full ending, which is irritating but is a good motivator to get more hours into the game. Overall I would say this is a great game, I completely recommend this to anyone on or off sale, Batman fan or not, and I will now be playing every other Batman game in the series, just to satisfy my new addiction.

Story: 2.5/10
Characters: 5/10
Side Activities: 3/10
Graphics: 7.5/10
Setting: 2.5/10
Polish: 5/10
Level Design: 3/10

Overall 4/10
This game was overall a missed opportunity. They got rid of Ezio and opted for a fresh start with a new protagonist in a new setting. Where Ubisoft messed up is they chose to make the game about native americans and European colonisers. I think. Although I can't remember too well, as the story telling was unbearable. It felt like the devs wanted to tell a story to Americans of how the country began and display some of the wars and treachury along the way. The only problem is, nobody cares about how the Assassin's and Templars have been shoehorned into the historical events, and nobody cares about what happened all those years ago, other than Americans, who already know what happened because they did it in school. Aside from the main antagonist, Charles Lee, every character is incredibly boring, none worse than our main characer, Connor. The biggest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the enitre series along with the confusing political plot have made this game an actual pain to play. You don't even get to play as the main character until about 6 hours in, but when you do you instantly regret it. There are several things i found enjoyable about this game among the 50 billion things I hated however. The tree climbing and mountain parkour was a nice addition, and the graphics overhaul from the last three games was nice. The combat has been changed significantly, which I think improves encounters with enemies overall. There was also a nice few father-son missions around sequence 9. I enjoyed the plot twist just before our experience with Connor begins, and the prison visit was cool. Other than that though, the main missions were insufferable. Side activities have been integrated with the world, and that basically means random NPC's will give you missions to do something boring for little reward. Despite saying all this though, I can't rank it too badly, as it does still have most of the usual Assassin's Creed tropes, such as fun parkour and satisfying executions and assassinations. Overall it's worth it for it's sale price of roughly £5, but don't expect too much. It is BY FAR my least favourite game to complete so far, and without a few redeeming moments in the story it wouldn't even be worth buying on sale.

Story: 5/10
Characters: 4/10
Side Activities: 0/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Setting: 9/10
Polish: 8/10
Level Design: 5/10

Overall 5/10
Game runs worse than Stephen Hawking, which is suprising as it looks considerably less impressive than modern titles coming out hese days. The combat and setting were the real strong points, I loved being a gladiator and a roman legionaire all rolled into one, and despite what people said about the combat being basic, I found that satisfying and fun even if its wasn't the biggest challenge. No side missions, no interesting characters other than the main guy is kind of cool, and the main antagonists are ok too. It isn't a terrible game, not a good one either. Get it on sale if you want a quick 6-8 hours of faily satisfying stabbing and decapitating

Story: 5/10
Characters: 7/10
Side Activities: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10
Setting: 5/10
Polish: 6/10
Level Design: 8/10

Overall 6/10
Strong Points in this game were the amazing setpiece missions where you have to parkour through underground rivers and burning ships. However, this is where the compliments end. The story is really boring this time, Ezio is an old man and he felt like going to Constantinople for a bit. Kills some templars too. Oh and Altair is in it and his segments are incredibly boring too. However the Assassin leader you meet in Constantinople is a fun charismatic character, resemblent of a young Ezio. There are nowhere near as many side missions this time, but the change of setting is nice, even if there isn't as much attention to detail or variety. At this point in the series the graphics are starting to compare more with todays standards, it was a big step up from Brotherhood, which is a shame because there is much less that keeps the player wanting more. New mechanics were introduced such as the hookblade and ziplining, which were a lot of fun, but there was also stuff that was just agonisingly bad, such as the den defence missions, the modern day first person sequences and craftable bombs. It's not a bad game, but compared to AC2 and brotherhood it was a dissapointment. After I beat the main story I was done and gladly moved on.

Story: 8.5/10
Characters: 9/10
Side Activities: 5/10
Graphics: 5/10
Setting: 9/10
Polish: 8/10
Level Design: 8/10

Overall: 8/10
For it's time the game may have been amazing, but it hasn't aged that well and there is a lack of things to do other than gather pointless collectibles after you finish the story. However the story is really compelling and Ezio, a character we see go through a lot and evolve from a boy to a man, has great charisma and is a lot of fun. Florence and Venice are amazing still after all these years and it's a lot of fun to climb around the rooftops, assassinating guards.