Recent reviews by Vetr

So I decided to restructure this review to address concerns I have seen in many other reviews. It will basically follow as Concern: Explanation/Relevancy. this review is spoiler free.

"The game is a dark souls ripoff" : People say this because the game has save spots, a dodge mechanic, and you lose your currency when you die. This game is in fact an action RPG. Yes Fury has a dodge mechanic. The game is not a dark souls rip off anymore than the first two games are, it pays more homage towards Diablo or Legend of Zelda. People who say this game is a soul's ripoff probably didn't play this game long and haven't really played many action RPGs. I would say this game is about as much of a souls ripoff as Soul Calibur or Armored Core. (Also, as a series, Darksiders came first...sooooo)

"The devs lied, Fury isn't a mage": I've seen this a lot; and I will confirm that Fury is not a spell caster with a magic tree branch. She is indeed a mage though, she fights using elements imbued into her weapons. By the time you have reached the end of the game you will have 4 different elements each with their own unique properties and abilities. The devs didn't lie.

"The fighting is clunky": I will agree that initially upon booting the game the combat felt clunky to me. That's because it's a different style not because it's bad. Approaching end game I have grown used to my various weapons and the attacks of enemies and I will say combat flows very smoothly and feels good. There are a lot of options and combos and switch ups between your multiple weapons. Many people complain there isn't a way to close space or deal with large amounts of enemies at once; I disagree with both those statements and would say they haven't really figured out their weapons and move sets yet.

"The game is too linear": The game is no more linear than any other Darksider game. I would say it is less so actually because you can fight bosses in various orders depending on how you want to do things. There is also plenty of back tracking to do to gain power ups and other secrets. One fair complaint is that there aren't really any side quests like there were in Darksiders 2. That is true, the entirety of "side quests" in this game early on. There are a lot of collectibles and achievements though. So don't worry, you have stuff to do in this game.

"There's no customization": I've seen this complaint a few times and I'm a bit lost on where they're coming from actually. You get one level up point which you can fit in one of three categories. You can upgrade each weapon you get 10 times. Similar to darksiders 1, you can also slot those weapons to give them bonus effects. Unlike Darksiders one you can upgrade those enchantments to change their bonuses to effect what you want. You can fight using whatever weapon you want or switch between weapons. I have not once felt like I was too limited in the game.

"Enemies deal too much damage" : At the start of the game it may feel like you're dying quite quickly. You can improve your hp through leveling up. You can also slot weapons to reduce incoming damage. Eventually you will also get good and not get hit as much.

"Game is poorly optimizied": I run a mid range AMD build and get 60fps on High settings. I have an RX-480 graphics card and am running on Windows 10 with 12gb of RAM. So far I have only run into one game breaking glitch and I am not entirely convinced it isn't my fault for just trying to get to places I shouldn't go.

Those are the big one's I've seen. Most of these to me suggest people haven't really gotten far into the game or are expecting the game to be exactly like other games in which case I'm not sure why they're buying it. New games should feel new and refreshing. If you have concerns or comments that haven't been addressed above feel free to comment and I will try to answer.

At 1000 hours I won't say the game is bad, just that I can't recommend people buy it in it's current state.

TL:DR, Game is fun but hackers and lag ruin the experience.

The game is fun, the game is challenging, it's good for playing with friends or to kill some time on your own. You can play the game at just about any pace you choose; once you get good you can run any weapon loadout you want and still win the game. You will most likely have tons of fun doing back flips on motor cycles and "accidentally" killing your teammates as you play the game. You may even eat good once in a while.

So why don't I recommend the game?

Minor Issues
Optimization - The game still crashes fairly often on mid-high end computers. Sometimes when your game crashes you can't reconnect, so the last 20 minutes of careful play are gone. Sometimes you reconnect and you're somewhere you definitely weren't when your game DCed and you have no idea how you got there. These are rare though, my game crashes about once or twice a week. The game is significantly better optimized than it was in beta.

Car Physics - I kind of hate to list this as an issue because it makes the game more fun sometimes; but it can also randomly get you killed and completely ruin your experience. The most common problems are running into invisible walls, randomly flying into the air because of acceleration physics, or just randomly exploding. They normally end in laughter and not anger; but it's not intentional (I think?) and therefore should be listed as a negative.

Major Issues
Lag or desynchronization as the playerbase calls it - PUBG uses client side hit detection to determine whether or not a bullet lands. Simply put this means that when you fire a gun, the bullet is generated as a moving box, and your game checks to determine if the moving box you fired collided with an enemy hit box. If yes, it tells the server you got a hit, if no, then it's a miss. Currently, even after a soft region lock, there is an excessive amount of lag in the game. This creates infuriating moments where you got shot in locations that you should be completely safe. "Well if you got shot then you were exposed at some point" - True, but when you combine a serious delay between what you see, and what your opponent sees, and consider that this game lends the edge to whoever takes offense, you can be dead without ever knowing you were under attack. If you're playing against someone who has 500-1000 ping (500-1000ms delay between their game and the server, and then a delay between the server and you) this can lead to a player running through closed doors, shooting you through/around walls, grabbing weapons they can't reach, and many other issues. Search pubg desync on youtube and you can easily find videos of people being killed in ridiculous situations because of this.

Hackers - Hackers are a weird plague in pubg. There are many people (who are probably lying) who claim to have literally never seen a hacker in pubg. If you need proof they exist there are plenty of videos online. They are more common in 3rd person perspective than first person; and they will ruin your day. Most people speculate that between 1 and 5% of players on PUBG are hackers. While that is a relatively small number, when you have 100 people in a game it means that you're almost guranteed one hacker per round. In general my friends and I would run into one in about ten games, we get killed more by people who are lagging so bad they're teleporting than we do by people who are actually hacking; we uninstalled today after running into hackers for five games straight (third person). The main problem with hackers is they make you feel like you're wasting your time, they ruin your enjoyment of the game. Loot carefull, kill three squads, fight your way to the center of the map. Then have your run abruptly end as some dude shoots your through a mountain from over 1000 meters with a crossbow. It's unlucky once, infuriating twice, Uninstalled after 5 games in a row of dying to hackers. Until the devs get proper proactive anti cheat I do not plan the play the game again.

Note on hackers, in TPP I see hackers in maybe 3/10 games on a bad day, they are killable and it can sometimes be rewarding. In FPP (First person perspective) across maybe 30-50 games that I have played I saw only two people I was suspicious of, and I only reported one. Other guy I couldn't tell if he was hacking or if he was extremely lucky and had his volume up so high his ear drums were bursting.

Mega Man X the rogue-like. So if you like side scrolling shooters, rogue-likes, or didn't particularly like mighty number 9 because it was a wishy washy story with mega man gameplay, here's a game with no current story with mega man x gameplay.

So I am going to give this game a pretty fair review, warning mild spoilers within.

First of all, 7/10

Who should play this game?
Fans of XCOM, Mass Effect, and or both.

Summary of Genres
FPS/3PS - Shooting Style
Strategy - Command a squad and fight aliens in the spirit of XCOM (outnumbered and outgunned in almost every fight, prove you're smarter than the alien invaders)
RPG - Level up, choose from different skills, use various loadouts to your heart's desire.

Weapons
A good score of different weapons to choose from, all of them having their own purposes and times to use them. Sniper rifles are not inherently OP, nor is the rocket launcher, nor is the pistol or any other weapon, everything had a time and a place to use them.

Backpacks
Grant various perks to different aspects of your character, some will fit your play style some won't, over all allows for a lot of different strategies to consider.

Squads
Choose from among 4 different class types to bring into battle with you. Mix and match the strategies and abilities of various classes for good combination, EG: use the commando to taunt a dude, making the guy think its a clever idea to run over a mine your engineer placed.

Story
Overall pretty good, gives you an inside look of what it is like to be one of the poor soldiers who you command during other XCOM games. The story is a bit linear, but it does have some small side quests, side missions, and various dialogue options to let you flush out the world and gain a better understanding. Some choices you make do have consequences which change the way the game carries out.

Wasn't the best game ever but it was pretty solid and I enjoyed playing it, definitely worth the money.

The game bored me. It had more hype and fan-boyism than The Beatles and I don't believe a single ounce of it was justified.

If you wanted a thrilling game filled with adventure and a physics engine, this certainly is not the game for you.

If you want a casual streamlined game at a slow pace, with little music, a crowbar, a physics engine, or just something to do to ignore your girlfriend for a few hours, this is a pretty good game for you.

Sorry about spoiling the crowbar fact, that was the only entertaining part of the game.