Recent reviews by MidnightPhreaker

I've been playing HARD games since the Atari 2600, and did enjoy my time with Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1/2.

(If you follow a walk-through, disregard my review as you might like the game, being told how to get OP at the start and cruise through the confusing mess that this game suggests you follow and go to completely random points that someone without a guide has no idea about.

But, me, myself buy games to play and explore, I like to complete games myself which is the complete opposite of what Elden Ring REQUIRES)

Elden ring is a joyless exercise in seeing how much you can take before just giving up. I'm not talking about the combat, I'm talking about the 'apparent' GOLDEN PATH with misleads you into thinking that's what you should be doing. In-fact, you're better of riding your horse all around this depressing wasteland and collecting random items to make sure you don't go to the first GOLDEN PATH area and just get 1 shot over and over.

Even if you love Demon/Dark Souls, please I beg you, read some proper reviews and even look at the guides showing what a mess this game is. This is worse than what we'd call a "Nintendo Power Guide" game back in the day...

So much of this game is just there to waste your time, or outright f**k you over, its not worth it. I'll give one example;

You come to a Castle that is a complete abstraction of what a castle is, makes no sense, and multiple pathes require leaps of faith, lead nowhere, or you have to jump frokm ledge to ledge to get to different parts, But you are getting through it thinking, its confusing as crap and you have no idea where you are and its been a while since a reset point (Lost Grace or some dumb crap).

You walk through a walled area, and you see a Knight you need to fight and know it'll be difficult, but then you swing the camera around and hidden behind a purposely obscured wall is ANOTHER KNIGHT waiting to blast you in the back...

This is a Soul-less game, its designed to be a Youtuber/Steamer/Follow our guide game...

Its not hard, its purposefully wasting your time.

Imagine if "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" had to be constrained by the Xbox 360 and PS3 in development? This was the problem Cd Project Red faced, when creating Cyberpunk 2077. But it was the next gen, the Xbox One and PS4 were hilariously, laughably under-powered on release, using 3-4 year old laptop hardware when they were Brand NEW!!! sigh.

I've loved Cyberpunk (the Pen & Paper RPG) since I was about 11 and had to go to 'Vacation Care' in my school holidays because I was the child of a Single Mother. One of the older kids, used to DM games of D&D, Netrunner, some GTA Style criminal game, but my favourite was Cyberpunk (later Cyberpunk 2020). If you're out there, Julien, THANK YOU!

This game is amazing, and has so much potential for new stories and additions it would be criminal to ate this low because people with underpowered laptops and/or people with potatos DEMAND THIS GAME PLAY ON IT!

What I don't get is, Skyrim ran like crap on PS3/Xbox 360, and had WAYYYYYYYYYYY more bugs, but it gets praised. But CD Project RED is trying to make something 100x more ambitious, and they get hung for it.

The sooner we're not restricted to the lowest common denominator, we might actually see something we're never seen before. But WHY CAN'T MY NINTENDO PLAY CYBERPUNK WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Death to Potato Gamers, Long live Ambition!

If there were only 2 ever fighting games allowed to exist, it would be this and kof '98 ultimate match.

I decided to put down the PS4 Pro version after 200+ hours, to wait for the PC Version and it was worth the wait! Runs really well on my rig (but I do take care of my System, YMMV), minimum of 70 fps @ 1440p so it runs at a locked 60 fine even in the complex areas.

Denuvo doesn't max out all cores like Assassin's Creed, and the game can be played offline when you lose internet connection. Honestly, all the people complaining about the port either have less than an hour play time or (by history) have potato PC's. If you have a reasonably modern "GAMING" pc (no core i3/integrated graphics crap) and take care of what is running on your computer then you should be able to play this fine.

TIP: If you are struggling with low framerate, turn off "Volumetic Fog" and set LOD Bias to "Low". That should allow the game to be played at 60 on even the most modest gaming pc.

As someone who grew up with Arcades and played SF2: World Warrior on release and bought it on SNES on release, this collection is a dream come true. I was tired of the re-releases of these games being the inferior console ports, hack jobs and/or having little to no documentation/museum info.

This collection has all the main heavy hitters of the series, all featuring the original Arcade versions. If you're wanting a hacked up, reskinned, non-arcade, eSports collection look elsewhere. This is a game for fans of the Street Fighter series, which welcomes all including the casual & old fans of Street Fighter who like to play Arcade mode or even Online.

Runs beautifully on my low powered Intel Tablet for portable Street Fighter, as well as my Desktop (i7 6700/GTX 1080). I've not encountered any Bugs/Blank Screens, but I keep my Computer updated and regularly clean/reinstall from a Image on my Server, so depending on your level of PC maintenance YMMV. (A friend had a black screen problem which was solved by a verify of game cache, updating his drivers and restarting).

The subdued filters are great and I am so glad they didn't include those horrible HQX blob filters. As for the filters they showed great restraint and realising this is an ARCADE COLLECTION, you get a no-filter mode for pixel purists, a TV mode (which is really well done Scanlines, with appropriate scaling/spacing) and an Arcade Mode which looks like it's being played on a 30Khz arcade screen (slight rgb pattern, with pixel blending). My favourite is the TV mode as it quite nicely matches the Toshiba Tube/Nanao Chasis in my Sega Astro City Arcade cabinet (Scanlines are darker on my Arcade cab tho as expected).

I have played a fair few lobby matches and have only had minor stalls between games where it is syncing the game session. I've played Ranked and apart from 1 or two laggy matches it has been smooth. No bugs encountered here in online either, a few rage quitters though ;) [NOTE: Ensure you go into Online options and change Input delay to 1 or 0].

I would have liked to see an option to select ANY of the 12 games when creating a Lobby (Especially Alpha 2/Champion Edition/2nd Impact) but restrict ranked to the main 4 but you can't have everything! I would like to ask Digital Eclipse to think about adding DLC to this collection as its missing a few of the cult favourites like "Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha" and
"Hyper Street Fighter II" (As these are both CPS-2 Hardware and could be run on their existing technology).

(I would ask for Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper but that is a Naomi game so it would require the inclusion of a new Emulator thus might not be feasable, maybe a Naomi Fighting game collection in the future - SFZ3U/CVS1/CVS2/MVC2/etc).

Overall, I highly recommend this collection to old, new and casual fans of Street Fighter. A+

After Watching S1E1-2;

Really good start to the series. I'll take it that this is taking place just before/during the "King of Fighters '94" tournament.

ie./ Rule change notice "Its now a 3 person team battle" & and Fatal Fury 1 was subtitled: "Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters".

I hope they don't change too much as I'm not sure I liked the change from Geese having Jeff Bogard killed in a drive by, to them having a battle outside a suburban house :/

But if they stay kinda true to the canon then i'm happy if they take a few artistic licenses with the story.

Keep them coming :D

After Watching S1E2-4+Geese SS;

The series gets better and better... This is why SNK is for the fans, and Capcom basically tries sucking every last inch from their fans...

SNK FOREVER.

I had a massive text block describing my history with fighting games from before even Street Fighter 1 and how only the true fighting game fans stayed around for the drought of 99-2007 (which The King of Fighters series stayed true, releasing games that whole time). But decided to say, fighting games, have never been about graphics, its has always been about the soul, technicality, depth and fun.

Firstly if you know you fighting games, then you'll know Garou: Mark of the Wolves battle designer, Yasuyuki Oda. He is the Director os KOF XIV.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves is arguably the best fighting game of all time (Yes, even compared to SF3:TS).

The King of Fighters roster is incredible and KOF XIV is one of the best rocking 50 (unique) characters old and new (with 4 legendary extra characters in the DLC), you won't find ONLY Charge characters or Shotos, etc. You'll find a fireball character that has charge moves, command grabs and 2 "supers" with two levels of power and a final third CLIMAX super, making up 5 total (Options). You have many different jumps, from hops to long leaps, meaning you can start with normal jumps but end up being able to plan moves with a tiny little overheap hop. There's no catchup gimmick and there's no learning other characters special life or abilities above their movelist. It really is everything a 2.5D game could have to let you feel in control of your fighter.

Before my final words, The King of Fighters XIV has;

- Arcade Mode (with ending)
- Auto combo system for newbies, that allows casual fighting game fans a great stepping stone to true combos
- Team specific endings (pick the people from a team and get a canon ending), over 50!
- Online Training mode (train with your friends/enemies/teachers)
- Online Ranked / UnRanked modes (with great netcode)
- Basic Systems Training mode (Character neutral)
- Mission Mode for Character Trials (Combo examples)
- Survival Mode
- Time Attack Mode
- Unlockable gallery (Pictures, movies etc)
- Great PC Port with minimal requirements (Which is updated all the time).

NOTE: Please take the Negative reviews with a grain of salt as the game is updated all the time and as PC gamers we realise
you need a certain level of hardware for modern games. (Sorry it probably won't work on a business Dell from 2008, but it will work on a minimal gaming rig from 2012).

I'll leave you with this, take a chance on The King of Fighters XIV! It has over 26 years of history, characters and story development. (The King of Fighters Universe, includes but not limited to Psycho Soldier games, Athena Games, Ikari Warriors, Fatal Fury/Garou Series, Art of Fighting Series, Metal Slug Series, and the list goes on). All mixed in a pot with superior & more varied characters than any of fighting game out there.

Come visit Southtown, if you give it a chance, it might just change your view of Fighting games!

And as the Lone Hungry Wolf himself, Terry Bogard would say;

"Get Ready! A Storm is coming!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAupwRyuow

If you liked the old indepth and deep Ghost Recons (hell even GRAW1/GRAW2) then stay far, FAR away from this!

Just another openworld shooter with xp and unlocks. And its especially annoying not being able to outfit your squad, instead having to unlock perks and weapons via XP...

Map is wide, game is shallow.

A sad entry into the once excellent Tom Clancy Ghost Recon series.

D-

Disgaea 2 is one of the best jRPG/sRPG's ever. Even if you skip the story (which I don't recommend, its hilarious) you still have an infintely replayable and enjoyable game. Buy it and love it!

For $7 you're getting a game twice as long as Double Dragon II on the NES.
It doesn't have Online Co-Op, but for $7 it has;

- Duel Mode (1v1)
- Story/Arcade Mode (You can unlock the normal enemies in the game, as playable characters in Duel Mode)
- Endless Tower Mode (You can unlock the normal enemies in the game, as playable characters in Story Mode) for Points/Levels/Enemies killed.

Story mode is decently long, but some parts can be a little cheap (Damn you returning jumping parts!) and like the previous games in the series you start seeing the same enemies again and again but thankfully the enemy roster has been bumped up quite a bit from DD1/2.

If you like Retro stuff and enjoy Double Dragon 1 and/or 2 on the NES, and realise you're getting basically another one of those then you'll be happy. If you are expecting to invest 10 hour long sessions then buy Pillars of Eternity.