Recent reviews by Wanyal

There is a copy of Timesplitters 2 inside this game. This is probably the only PC port of that game we'll ever get.

At this point I'm convinced that Bethesda doesn't even bother with making their games intuitive or seamless to play because the modding community will do the work for them for free, and the players will excuse it all with "well, there's a mod for that". Well, I would much rather mod all of the game's files off my SSD instead of spending more time on Nexusmods than actually enjoying the game. Imagine the kinds of things people could be making instead of making the inventory interface actually have some information on it, quest NPCs walk the same speed as the player, or adding an FOV slider, or whatever else Bethesda should be doing as standard but neglected to.

Don't get me wrong, there are so many small things like this, be they legacy issues that haven't been sorted out, or entirely new problems that only serve to pull you out what is there that is actually enjoyable. For some reason its 2330 and you still have to go back to quest givers to complete the quest and get paid.

The most baffling thing is how you get around. They didn't want to make a game about space exploration, fine, but what we got is a confusing combination of space combat/ship docking mechanics and a fast travel menu. You can do ship combat and boarding, sure, but that always happens in orbit of a planet, moon, or asteroid. If you actually want to go anywhere you will be using a fast travel menu as trying to fly there yourself doesn't actually get you anywhere. Sometimes you will fast travel into orbit, and then fast travel down to a planet, because of how clumsily they tried to have both a game in space, but not a game about being in space. They seem to have forgotten that a large part of that makes Bethesda games enjoyable is the worlds you walk around in, the ability to see something interesting in the distance, go there, and find something interesting. This game has none of that. You can drop anywhere on almost any planet, sure, but you will find nothing, or at least, you will find one of a dozen copy pasted facilities in the middle of nowhere, but there won't be anything inside that facility that is interesting. Mass Effect wasn't a game about space exploration either, but they knew that space combat /ship docking was out of the question precisely because it's a game where a story is being told and that story happens away from the ship, and all the places you can go away from the ship are interesting and have things to see.

The game is fine. Expect a slightly more grounded version of Saints Row 3 that looks nicer.

The "woke"-ness is very overplayed by reactions but some of the raunchy long running jokes have been toned down. Otherwise you know what to expect, if you have played Saints Row 3. Not worth all the controversy at all, really.

This is Volition's last game, its clear, when you play it that it was made by people who cared about what they were doing. They were closed unceremoniously because a giant holding company got too big and here was this 6/10 video game that sold poorly because it was released too early and marketed in a confrontational way. Saints Row deserved better, Volition deserved better.