Recent reviews by Halfblood54

Borderlands 4 isn't a bad game it's just not good enough. The performance issues aren't great. I never had issues with stuttering, but I can run just about anything at max settings and this game forced me to medium to just maintain 70 fps.

The gameplay is fine. The gunplay is good but the enemies can be far too reactive when you hit them. A single round to the head and the enemy is flailing all over the place, making them significantly harder to hit again. Near the end of the game you'll be fighting dozens of enemies all with large aoe attacks and multiple health bars so you better have a significant array of elemental weapons at this point or you're going to have a rough time.

The story is forgettable. I lost interest about 10 hours in when I went to the second area and they completely forget that the first group I worked with existed. The side quests weren't anything special, even the one vault I did was nothing but a wave encounter then a final boss.

Honestly if you have the desire to play a looter shooter, just go play borderlands 2.

The Alters is a game that on paper I should enjoy but I enjoyed very little of my 11 hours of gameplay.

The game is sold to you as a sci-fi base building colony sim. What it is, is a daycare management game where you have adult children who cannot be pleased no matter what you do. The game honestly is more fun before you ever create your first "Alter". The second they come on the scene you are constantly pounding down nails and nobody is happy with any decision you make. You might make on alter happy while pissing off the other 3. They constantly whine and complain and then get angry when you try to comfort them. Every constant conversation is like a minefield where no matter what you say they get angry with you.

The base building is maybe the best part of the game as you get a lot of variety in the rooms and configuration. The switch to a 2d view when in the base along with the movement within the base is well done and seemless. The not so great part is the insane limitation on weight and fuel. Act 1 and 2 I can imagine a number of people running out of time because they don't completely understand what some of the numbers mean or where to find them.

Then comes the dialogue. It's horrible. Every alter is just awful to deal with, and you have no choice but to deal with all of their problems. I listened to nearly every line in the first act and the voice acting was not helping my annoyance with these characters. Act 2 however, elevated my disdain for these characters. I sucessfully navigated 3 uprisings in actt 2 and yet at the end, multiple of my alters left me to fend for myself because of the choice I made to save their life. The game only gives you two possible ways to deal with the second act and one of them forces half your crew to abandon you while the other I assume does the same.

The only positive of this game is the world design. The overall look of the landscapes as well as the general graphics are very pretty. This does not componsate for the horribly small maps that make up act 1, 2 and 3. I see no reason why they spread this game over three different locations rather than just expanding the space you start in. It would have been far more enjoyable to have those dedicated lines you set up stay from the beginning rather than having to search for new nodes in each act.

Overall this game is just not fun. You play wack a mole to solve issues for your infantile companions, constantly are interrupted to solve there problems, and suffer through their cringy dialogue.

If you like grand strategy and feel up to the task of watching a few youtube videos to fully understand the controls and stats. It's 100% worth your time.